


The Centaur

by saddletrampboyfriend



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Western, M/M, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, i took star trek skinned it tanned the hide and turned into a fringed leather jacket, spock is a human man captain kirk is a texan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:35:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 56,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21924514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saddletrampboyfriend/pseuds/saddletrampboyfriend
Summary: In the summer of 1970, a single rider leaves his home, his job, and the only person he cares for, to track down a vanished man.Three years later, he stumbles into a gang of vindictive bikers, the key to ending his search, that are hell-bent on hunting down the very person he's been chasing. Pulled between his own instincts of self-preservation, and following the man who's existence has eluded and fascinated him for years of his life, he finds himself dragged across the West on a swift, terrifying chase that reveals to him truths about his past, the man next to him, and most frighteningly, how far he will ride in the name of Jim Kirk.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	1. The Vaquero

The rider wakes up like a house of many people. 

The first to rise is his head, which snaps up at the quick fear that rouses him, calls his hands and his legs to reassert himself on his mount. His head pounds with the sudden, righted blood flow, and his arms in the same way, and then the rest of his prickling body follows suit. He becomes aware of his hands still wrapped around thin reins, a moving body against his jeans, slowly ambling forward despite the lack of direction. His whole skin tingling with a cold breeze, his lips metallic, paperlike, he pulls himself to his height with fingers steadying him in the dark mane before him. 

The fear is the usual kind, of falling, though he’s never done so from a horse’s back, and doesn’t expect to. He turns to look below him, anyways, only to remind himself how unfounded such fear is. Uneven ground, sparse, sandy grass and the rugged movements of loose rock racing past hooves and legs. Bad country. If he had been awake, he would've steered wide of this terrain, for the dangers it poses to his horse, and consequently, himself. If he could stand to sleep flat on the ground, he wouldn't have to face these small mistakes. 

Before him, the sky is clear, and baby blue, and the earth is a trembling line clear across the horizon. Maybe half a mile out, the geometry of a town. Reflexively, he arches his back, reaches over his shoulder and shoves one hand into the knapsack there, crunching thin plastic, feeling the quantity of water inside. And his stomach. When had he last eaten? In the last town, its name forgotten by the time he took to realize it didn't hold what he sought after. Just like the towns before that. He will need fueling in many senses before striking out again, he'll stop in a bar, get water first.

There's no time to further plan his course, below him there is another small stumbling motion, and the cropped fur below his hand ripples with tension. Steadying himself once again on the back of his horse, he lays his ankles flat against the rolling sides and brings them both to a halt, sliding with a creak that seems to run the length of his spine and down to his feet onto the rough ground. Strange thing to stand on two legs, it feels much too little, he still needs to hold both hands against the horse's flank for the first several seconds he is against the earth again. He drags a hand back against his hair, it comes away wet, clammy, he is shivering with the cold and stuck to his clothes at once, yet he can't remember the dream that woke him in the first  
place. 

An open field, a blue sky, a bedroom with a red quilt. Dampness. The typical nonsense. He is right in disembarking, when he sets his knees against the jagged ground, takes the knife from his pocket, and feels down the tense shoulder, the leg and finally lifts the hoof, a wide, dark rock is nestled deep inside. Allowing them down this path wasn’t smart in the least, he thinks as he pries it forwards, like someone else might say, a real fuckin’ smart thing to do.

When his horse is set right, he rocks backwards off his knees and sits looking at the sprawling mass of the town before him. His whole body aches, he really could stand to pay for a motel room, he reminds himself, but knows he won't anyways. He needs to save his money for food, drinks. Feed for the horse. Even though he has more than he knows what to do with, it doesn't feel much like his anyways. Never did. 

He sits a while longer, the horse over him dutifully standing still, shadow wafting over the paper of his map as he determines what he sees is a spot called Black Rock, which seems to be significantly off trail from Highway 36, the road he had been trying to keep with since entering New Mexico, back in October, which feels eternities ago. He finds the path back to 36 with his finger, just a night’s ride back East, but decides to stop in Black Rock anyways. Then he lifts his bandana and wipes the sweat away, scrubbing the thin fabric against his rough jaw, ruffles his hair, breathes life into his weary body and rises again to his horse. 

Black Rock is like any other town he’s stopped in. 

When he first began the slow journey of combing through Texas, and then New Mexico, every town was new to him. Every town was different from the last, The buildings sometimes looked the same, but were all different still. The shops were different. The bars were different. The dirt was different. The rusty gas stations were different, and the people. More than anything, the people were always different. But as the time stretched on, and the purpose of his journey became less a pursuit and more of a routine, a cycle of relocation for no reason besides his own fear of settlement, they all sort of blended into a muddy water in his mind. Perhaps it wasn’t so despondent as that, but it hasn't ever done any good to overthink it, and never will, he's sure. 

As for the town, which is still just that, it welcomes the rider into a void of late-afternoon lifelessness entirely comforting for a man on horseback in modern America, the cold permeating to the soul of every lonely car, every hunched pedestrian. Life exists, storefronts down a long road are lined with dusty trucks with beds full of red cable, gas jugs and toolboxes, and empty cabs with still dreamcatchers hanging on the mirrors. In the buildings there is motion, doors tinkle and human beings glide in and out, a man fills his Ford at a gas pump, one hand flicking a cigarette with the thumb. Strange planet. Black Rock looks to him like someone took a pair of tweezers to it and started plucking out buildings without aim.

He leads them down the only promising road, turning his head for the sign of a bar, before sighting a little neon sign in a shop window, the only indication of its existence, and still sleeping through the day, and leaps down with much more agility than after his sleep back in the rough country, quickly locating a lamppost to secure the reins to. Butterflies in his stomach of lead and smoke. Rotted, spasming butterflies in the early stages of rigamortis. Tired of the trick. Always, he thought a bar would be the place, so he always got it out of the way first. He presses his lips together and feels a coppery split. At least he really needed the drink, this time.

The inside of the bar feels like the movie set of a bar in a low-budget film. The sudden dark when he enters the room makes him blind, the scent of cigarettes, of drinks and above all, human beings invades his nose and mouth. The scant couple of heads that look up to the door with a nervousness that makes him feel illogically guilty for a crime he doesn’t seem to be aware of doesn't improve the situation. The one standing figure in the room is the bartender, a round, annoyed looking woman who mustn't rise two inches above any of the seated customers, and she eyes the strange newcomer as she wrings a dirty rag into the sink behind the counter, and he can feel her coarse hands on his throat, and takes a deep breath. 

He orders a glass of water, wishes he could ask for tea, but knows the idea is laughable. The water is from the tap, no ice, but he isn't charged, so he drinks it gratefully. For five minutes he sits at the bar, right in the center of the room, not anxiously whipping his head around like he used to, checking every face, scrambling around in his seat whenever he heard the door open. Just sitting. Exposing himself to the patrons. Establishing a presence. Idly glancing at the little bartender fixing drinks and scrubbing out cups, pointedly avoiding him until he finishes a glass of water, then swiping it away to refill without asking. 

He must drink five glasses like this, silently allowing her to take the glass back without request. He must look dead on his feet, for that kind of service. And yet, no one. The butterflies are gone. and eventually he'll pick himself up again, and ride out, on to another town, another time, another bar. Deep in his throat, he feels the beginnings of something he hasn't felt in many miles, and he is preparing to sling himself into the cycle again when he hears the sound. 

He isn't the first to realize, when he raises his head the bartender is already still, head up. No fear etches the hard lines of her face, but she listens, then like a broken clock, continues on her path as if uninterrupted. A quick glance around reveals many others following the same course, listening, then continuing, none talking, none even whispering to one another. All in on some secret. 

The sound is like a storm. Or five, six of the most devastating storms you could imagine, wound together in a tight bundle, and building closer and closer. to the dead quiet bar before, in an amazing crescendo, darkening the windows from their figures and coming to one clean stop. He can feel his throat go dry in an instant, dares to lift his glass for another nervous swallow. The time stretches on after the sound dies, as if the phantom that hurricaned in decided to slip past the dusty little door at the end of the block, decided on a more exciting destination. He can feel the room stir again, tentatively loosening shoulders, speaking in low voices to one another. 

When the door opens, the entire room goes as cold as a haunting. Everyone is silent, impossibly more so than before, frozen in their seats, the draft from outside carrying the smell of gasoline and the road, dust and sweat. Like a whole damn militia had burst in with their guns raised. He can hear the sound of boots, maybe four people of heavy stature, step through the doorway and come to a halt before the door swings to a rattling shut, and in front of him the bartender looks straight ahead, like she did when he entered, jaw set, impassable, then turns and goes about her business. He wishes he could catch an impression of the newcomers in her reaction, but there is none. No way to tell for certain. The room is just as quiet again. No movement. no sound. 

But the strangest part of it all is that the rider can feel him, this new figure in the room. He doesn't know how to explain it, or how to prove it, but from the instant he came into the room he has felt the hurricane's eyes on the back of his head, has felt himself being checked up and down, knows somehow that they two are here to meet one another, though all the while he intended it to be another man. And then, feeling the danger in every motion, he places his hand against the edge of the bar, turns himself clear around, and raises his head to meet him. 

Over the next several weeks, he will bear this face in the darkest locus of fear in his mind, and for the next few years, he will think of the hand that rests on the leather gunbelt as the hand that grabs him in the night and shakes him awake, the heavy pistol whose dark handle peeks out from its holster against his wrist as the cold ring of death that follows him. He will carry the memory of this person for as long as he lives. 

The first time he sees Khan, the word in his mind is lion. With his hand slowly running across the hem of his belt, so close to that gun that, for all he knows, could be for show, but still strikes nervousness in him, he turns and looks directly into his eyes, eyes creased all around with light wrinkles, grey whites and black irises that blend in with his pupils and make the thin lines of them in his head look too dilated. His mouth is hard, his cheeks are hard, his jaw is hard. His head is framed with hair that doesn’t seem to have greyed with age - despite the firmness and cold regality of his expression, he doesn’t seem much older than the rider himself, a handful of years at the most - yet the teased mane over his forehead and spilling over his leather-clad shoulders is white as the sand on his boots. There is something terrifyingly spiritual about his appearance, covered in leather and bleached denim, his free hand, deeply cut with veins and sun-tanned and freckled slowly flexing at his side as if releasing long talons. Under his riding jacket, his shirt hangs half-buttoned, his chest exposed and as tanned as his face. 

On either side of him is a tall, almost identical cub, dressed in the same color and material, but faces significantly softer, both not possibly older than twenty-five. Neither of them carries the gravity of existence as him, the hell-raising presence.

Physically, he is a man. To the rider, his first impression is of a man, a man who is imposing, attractive, and mysterious, but a man. Looking for something, just like anyone else. He doesn’t understand why the people surrounding him so silent in their rabbit-like fear, because even with a gun, he is a man. But then the lion looks at him. And the rider has an amazing vision of something he hasn’t envisioned for much time, an image of his death. That this individual before him can, and very well could be the one to finally do him in, and as unusual as it seems, the idea doesn’t fill him with trepidation, but an odd sense of comfort, in knowing that much. There would be a nobility in it, even if those powerful talons held his throat and tore him to shreds, whipped him back and forth across the ground until his spine broke, he would feel noble, to be the blood on those hands. To be sprayed across the dirt - well. And then the cracked lips open, a tongue darts across them before he begins to speak, in a deep, smooth Latin accent. 

“That is your horse outside.” Not a question. 

“She’s the horse I ride.” 

“She belongs to someone else? She has another rider?” 

“No, she doesn’t.” It is mechanical speech, conversation he doesn’t understand in the slightest, but carries on with as much sophistication as he can muster. He can’t imagine what this lion-man wants with such information, but knows he is looking for something, and the information seems to mean something to him in the end, because he breathes in with an incredible heaving of his broad chest, and he can see the jaw go tense, and the strange, catlike eyes skirt the room. 

“You came here alone?” 

“I did.” 

He doesn’t know if it pleases him, but he seems to be satisfied with that answer, because in a single glance over his shoulder, his bodyguards are already through the door, and like a phantom, he’s gone from the room as swiftly as he entered, and the deafening rumbling of his convoy is full force, then racing away, fading from earshot and presumably, the town itself. 

In a moment, the bar has returned to the same not-life, sluggish motions and lowered conversation. He turns and the bartender gives him a true look for the first time since his arrival, hand coming forward to retrieve his half-empty glass, her forehead tightly knit as if his face had changed in the moment he spent looking at the lion-man. He swallows, gathers his courage, and speaks to her apron strings as she fills the glass at the tap. 

“Do you know who that was?” 

“Me? Not personally.” She sets the glass in front of him again, and he manages a turn of the lips, though he isn’t sure she notices, or minds, and begins to run his fingers over the ridged surface once again. “The name’s Khan, or something like that. He and his vaqueros have been tearing across the highway since Texas, from what I hear, there’s been rumors about it, it’s all I hear from back East. The news carries.” 

“Vaqueros? You don’t think that’s too romantic? They seemed like a biker gang to me, that’s all.” 

“Well, it’s the idea. Coming around asking after some lone rider, that costume they all wear, that gun. They feel like misplaced actors, if you ask me.” He doesn’t dare to bring up how similarly troubled she seemed by their entrance. 

“That’s what it was about? They’re looking for a biker?” 

“Yeah, some Texan. That’s all I know.” 

Instantaneously, every butterfly that has ever possessed the cavity of his chest springs into existence, and throws itself about against his ribs so voraciously that he has to raise his glass to his lips just to contain himself. 

“Might you know anything about him? His name?” It doesn’t do much good, he can still hear the excitement in his own voice, and the way she presses her lips and folds her arms makes him nervous, and he bows his head again. 

“Listen, now, you can’t imagine the sketchy guys I get coming through here on the run. I’ve got no clue who this Texan is, looks like. or the business he has with Khan. And I haven’t seen a lone biker, or any biker before that fancy bunch since before I can remember.” 

“Well, what if he isn’t a biker?” That was right, Khan had asked about his horse. A rider. He must have reason to suspect his target would be on horseback, heading down this way. He can’t process the implications of that, not now, after so long. 

“You could be onto something. Well, anyways, I sure pity the guy to cross hands with that mean-looking bunch. An unpleasant situation, for sure. He’d better be running fast as he can whatever it is he’s using to get around.” 

But maybe it was just right, to reach a break like this just when he was becoming so jaded. More than anything, he’s jaded to the idea of clear fate, but for a giddy, manic moment, he believes that everything is right after all. Khan is looking for a man on horseback, a horse like his, for that matter, or a man that once was on horseback, and would do best to be in a more powerful vehicle at this rate anyways, which is the clearest thing he’s heard in months, clear as a million bells in his ears. 

Aware of the strangeness of his brief stay on the middle barstool, he tips the bartender, and thanks her for the information, and stuffs his trembling hands in his coat pockets as he trudges out and back to his horse, still standing right at the post, dark legs peppered with dust, no doubt from the motorcycles whose tracks still run clear through the parking spaces and down the road out the other end of town. For a moment he stands and looks at them, the rough tracks in the thick grime of the street, until the cold bites his neck. While his back was turned, the sun slipped over the westward mountains and now the sky is deep in its sorrowful blues, making the little bar sign, which he thought so puny when riding up, buzz like a gem set against the glass, winking out at him as if to remind him never to forget what took place behind that wall. At the time, it doesn't occur to him how wise the little red neon sign was to him, how sincere it ended up in its advice. 

The gas station he spotted when riding in at the start of the evening provides a convenient replenishing of pack water, fruit (all the oranges in his pack inexplicably turned up bruised and molding when he opened it to check his stores, despite him counting on their freshness at least through the week, as if a curse passed through their little bodies), instant coffee, uncooked rice, and stale bags of trail mix. With the rest of the twenty-dollar bill - he can't stand carrying change with him, he buys a new butane lighter, a bag of sugar cubes, and a handful of candy bars. With the new rations organized on his back, he feels at the back pocket of his pack for the horse feed, and decides to search around town for a store. If they are to ride with purpose, the horse half of their existence will need to rely on much more than a few mouthfuls of feed from his hands, sugar, and the grass found along the path. 

With both sides satisfied, the horse fed in the parking lot outside the feed store much to her delight, the rider situates himself once more behind her head, runs his hands down the mane until his pounding heart calms, and points them towards the fading tire tracks out in front of the bar, instead of back east towards 36.

They ride down the side of the road until they can't ride more, until his stomach growls and her gait slows, and he worries about falling asleep once again and missing the camp entirely. According to the map, which he manages to rustle out while they are still in motion, there won't be a town for miles, and they would likely set up camp somewhere off the road, wherever they can find flat country to do so. And eventually, he does come across the low plume of campfire smoke, seemingly coming from a smattering of brush maybe a quarter mile off into the country. 

At this moment, he has a decision to make. To continue on ahead, get an upper hand on their search, and risk being seen and brought into suspect for crossing Khan's path a second time, or sneak up on the campsite here and now, and hope to glean something more helpful about their search. He's never been good at pressured decisions of this nature. Always closes up until the decision is made for him. But his horse shuffles around in the dirt as if impatient, and shakes him out of his trance, and before he can think it through, he grits his teeth, comes down from her back, and sets off towards the campsite. 

With the horse, his coat, and his pack tucked away behind a rocky outcrop, he circles carefully around the brush where the smoke billows out into the night sky, and the silver of their bikes gleams in the moon and firelight. As he comes into earshot, he notices there are more voices than just the three that entered the bar, there are at least six separate, men and women's voices, none of them Khan, talking under the breath. As he lies there, forearms flat against the ground, his eyes closed and straining to hear, he feels another low rumble through the earth, and slowly the cacophony of a single motorcycle grows and stops outside the campsite, then the heavy bootfalls of the scout as they come forward and take a seat before the fire. 

Then, he hears Khan’s voice, and has forgotten the deep smoothness of it, as he straightforwardly requests his report. He can just make out the tail end of his response, the name of the town. 

"-but if he keeps on the track he has been, I'll bet tomorrow night we'll find him here.” The sound of a finger against paper. “He's in a car, now. I saw the keys in his hand, a jaguar." 

"Thank you. We will take our time, catch up to him in five days. If we can be on the road early that morning, we will reach the town with time to locate, and trap Kirk before he knows we are there at all. You have done very well." 

"Thank you." 

The voices die out, reduced to casual words to one another that sink beneath the crackle of the fire. He waits, staring at the distant fire and Khan’s hands, thumbing the pages of a tattered book that doesn’t seem to be comprehensible in the fluttering light. There is no guard posted. When the fire goes dark, and silence has reigned over the scene for twenty minutes, he shakily comes to his feet, rubbing the dirt from his forearms, and slinking back to his horse where he realizes the true risk of moving ahead, and sleepily pulls up his coat around himself, leans against her flank, and falls fitfully unconscious. 

☆

For four days he trails the Khan gang, deeper into Arizona than he ever expected to travel, in a straight line down the highway. His throat tightens no matter how much he drinks, his lips perpetually chapped from the wind, and from dawn until dusk his mind rages with questions. Foremost of them is the question of why. Why is this frightening stranger pursuing the same man as he, and what did he do to deserve such resolute pursual from Khan? Most frightening of all, what will Khan do when he catches him? In a moment, will his entire journey's purpose be cut short? 

He already knows it is in both their best interests to reach the man before Khan, but that brings into light a question he has refused to consider since he set out on the fateful odyssey all those months ago. The thought of which turns his chest to stone, and weighs him down until he feels he can't move forward any longer, as close as he may be to his goal. What will he do when he catches him? 

Four nights after he snuck into Khan's campsite, the rider is on his stomach once more in the brush, listening to then talk amongst themselves, when his heart drops. They have him placed in the local hotel on the main street, his car hidden in an alleyway across from it, and before he knows it, they are lifting from the ground, packing up, and he hears the click of a gun being loaded. Biting his lip, he stays motionless on the ground and watches, helpless as they pick up camp and mount their bikes, having to stay until they are on the road to sprint to his horse, load up his supplies and take off into the desert. According to the map, he can cut through the hills and arrive in the new town before Khan, but how much longer, he doesn't know. 

He doesn’t have the time to think about Winslow, Arizona, the feel of it relative to other towns, he is there, and he is locating the hotel in question, right in the middle, then skirting around the back for a place to leave the horse, trying her once again to a fence tucked in an alleyway, then quietly making his way towards the building. The thought of it makes him nauseous, even having to search for him, after all this time, all those miles. The intensity of it makes him sick, and his head full of cotton, the manic clarity completely intangible. Around the side of the building is a fire escape, leading right up to the rooming floor. He realises he has not made much time on Khan, because he already can hear the rumble of the bikes, and stops in his tracks before mounting the ladder long enough to feel his insides turn. He does not want a gunfight, doesn’t even know if he’ll have a gun, and what will they do if he doesn’t? Barricade inside the hotel room? 

He makes quick time at the fire escape as the rumbling comes to a head just around the building, and he can hear them dismounting, can hear the crunch of their boots as he places both hands against the window and feels for a latch, some way to force it when he realizes it’s locked. His hands are already shaking, he can already feel his plan going horribly awry. 

The window he’s rattling, rattles back. 

There’s a sudden pressure under his hands, in the glare of the moonlight he can see motion behind the windowpane, and the window slides open and a man jumps out, grabs him and turns him against the side of the building, covering his mouth with a rough, clammy hand before softening, catching sight of him, and returning his hands to himself. Before he can open his mouth, the second rider has a pistol out of his waistband, and is pressing it into his chest - he instinctively takes it - and then drawing another that he grips tight in his right hand, and scans the ground before them before leaning in close. 

His gun raised out over the street below, he gestures to a far alley he can see peeking out from behind a pharmacy building, and speaks in a low, even voice. 

“That’s where we’re runnin’ to. Keep your head low, and don’t turn around.” 

“Jim, he’s got six men with him. They’ll be circling around soon, when they realize you aren’t where they think you are.” 

“That’s why we’re gonna move fast.” 

It’s a matter of not enough time. 

Above his head, the sound of shattering wood, and a bang somewhere out behind him. He ducks and nearly stumbles off the fire escape, held aloft by a strong arm that hooks around his waist and pushes him against the wall once more, then clamps his hands around the gun and shoves him forward, down the steps. Before he can think, even open his mouth they are tearing down the steps, and then Jim's hand is on his and he's sprinting down the street with him, towards the alley he noticed the car in, and he doesn't have the time to make that decision again, the same one he had to make three years ago, just simply doesn’t have it. 

When they reach the car, he ducks once again as a shot rings out, and a voice yelling, one of Khan’s men, and the sound of several people in motion. The keys rattle in the lock, and the driver’s side door flings open, and then he’s flinging his own open and he doesn’t have the time to not get into the car. All he knows is if he stayed out in the alley, he would be shot, so he gets in and closes the door, and lets Jim peel backwards and send him slamming back against his seat, then, with a horrible screeching and a rumble not unlike the motorcycles that will undoubtedly be on their heels soon, tear forward into the night. 

He just doesn’t have enough time.


	2. Sleep-Walk

The strangest part to the rider, of the whole predicament he's in, of everything that has happened in the past week, how immensely his quiet nomadism has been turned on its head, is that they didn’t meet in a bar. As silly as it feels when they’re doing seventy-five down the highway away from Khan, and his entourage, and he still has Jim’s gun in his hand, and they both had a brush with death not half an hour earlier, it is the only thing on his mind.

For years he had it in his head, that it would be a dark little bar where they made their reunion, not the fire escape of a hotel with gunfire over their heads. And it still doesn’t feel like a reunion, when neither of them has spoken beyond what was needed for survival, and not a word since Jim started driving. Though he is there in front of him, flesh and blood and a sheen of sweat, he doesn’t feel right, because he hasn’t turned and given that strange look he’s imagined a million times, when he finally recognized him as the man from Texas, that man from the ranch back three years ago. And he hasn’t raised his hands to his hips as he’s squinted as his uncut hair and unshaven jaw, and looked him up and down and said something about how much he has changed. No, they haven’t met each other yet. Maybe it’s the exhaustion, the stress, but he feels almost like if he could get them both to a bar, and sit Jim across the room from him, and turn him around with a drink in his hand, and redo it how he knew in his heart was the way to do it, it would all follow the right course, the way it’s intended for them to rediscover each other. Maybe Khan would simply fade away. Maybe this is all a test.

He leans back in the passenger seat, looks up into the black roof, and thinks of his figure across the room, the breadth of his shoulders as he conversed with someone else, animated and raising his hands as he spoke. The deep humidity of the air, the beads of sweat on his glass he ducks his head to examine, collecting them on the pad of his thumb. The early years of his wandering, where he didn’t get caught raising his head, and didn’t get caught looking at plaid shirts across the room. When he had a car around back, and couldn’t tell you how to fasten a saddle if his life depended on it. All his thoughts were about the road, about spending too much time in one place, and he pursued no one but a past version of himself, cutting down his body like a thin yellow road marker every night. 

Voices bothered him back then much more, too, and the sound of angered men clustered around the bar pulls at his mind until he has to grit his teeth to keep himself impassable. Their drunken voices crescend, mix with shaky laughter and two voices going back and forth. He must get back on the road, once he finishes his drink, and have some silence before he needs to stop for the night. This little Texan hole is steeped in cliché, men in high boots and thick accents, and beer being knocked back like everything is a competition. The man in the red flannel, the one he's been drawn to, that pulls the attention of the room like a thespian, has the lower hand now, even behind the large figures of two other men, he can tell so, and his voice has taken on as nervous, low quality, and the bartender is rushing over and yelling something about taking their quarrel outside, though none of the parties involved seem to have any intention of doing so, and drown out his tired wailing as one of the taller men pull up a fist of red plaid, and swing it to the side, and send something crashing back into a barstool. Then it is all arms, and the sound of boots shuffling against the wood floor, and without thinking he goes stiff, and some little part of him that is still a scrappy street child is propelling him across the room and into the thick of it. 

He is pushed off in a second flat, but those child instincts take his hands and pull him back in, and he can hear himself over the others, he can’t even remember what he says to them, can’t remember what the fight was over to begin with, just some joke taken too seriously, something dumb Jim had said without thinking, or knowing him, probably still thinking. And then he is the center of it all, and Jim is looking at him so strangely, not only as if he is a stranger, but as if his very existence baffles him, and the fact of him being in the room, half a foot from his shoulder is a strange, and unbelievable fact.

Despite his effort, he doesn’t do any good to pacify the situation, and before he knows it, one of the men is grabbing and slamming Jim again into the side of the bar, then knocking him to the floor, and there are hands on himself, and his hands are on others, and then in an instant he hears the smash of a bottle and something attaching itself to his forehead, just over his left eye. And everything goes faint, like entering a thick fog. 

In the confusion that follows, he is aware of sirens, a pressure in his face, and something under his arm. Flannel fabric, a strong muscle, someone hoisting him from the ground and hurrying him towards the back door. The following events occur to him in retrospect, and from a secondhand account. How they stumbled down the sidewalk in the black darkness. How he sat with his back against a chain fence, neither unconscious nor the alternative, looking straight ahead at a pair of scuffed boots against the sidewalk, heel tapping as the figure shifts uncomfortably, rubbing one shoulder and wincing at the pain it causes. One hand holding the receiver of a payphone to his ear, silently turning his head down either side of the empty backroad. “I’m sorry, really, I’ll make it up to you, I owe you, I swear.” Out of everything, what sticks is how gentle he sounds. This is the same man who got the cops called just now, with whatever he said to those men who beat him up. For a moment he turns his head to the side, and raises a finger to probe a dark spot on his mouth, and his eyes are wide. “We’re on the corner. By the payphone, you know. I think he’s concussed, some idiot cracked him over the head real bad. If not for me, just do it for him, you know. He kind of saved my ass.” 

His throat closes at the realization that he is being discussed, though he can’t make out half the words, but as soon as it begins to bother him, the conversation goes silent, and there is a shadow obscuring his sight, a strong, steady hand on his face, a warm thumb against his cheek, pulling at his eyelid, the same, gentle voice apologizing to him - for what, he isn’t sure - saying it’s better than jail, he’ll thank him in the morning. And in this strange haze, with a stranger’s face so close to his, carefully pressing against the origin of the numb feeling on his forehead, hands flat against the sides of his face, like no one has ever touched him, and god knows never so gently, he wonders if this is how people kiss each other. How they really do. Not out of obligation, or fear, but just wanting it.

And for a moment, he thinks about kissing him, careful not to touch the crusting blood on the side of his mouth, can almost feel his soft breath against his skin. The sensation is so visceral, he thinks it might be happening after all, everything is too thick to tell. And if it does, he must faint again from the sensation, because he doesn’t even remember taking his back off that chain fence. 

☆

His first thought, when waking, is that it has all been some elaborate, fevered dream-reality, and his whole body is light. He feels light tearing across every plane of his flesh, light trickling in through his eye sockets, light dripping into his brain and filling his skull to bursting. His second thought, when waking, is that the bottle strike has killed him, and the moment he sat with that stranger on the corner was a strange, metaphoric incarnation of limbo, and he passed the subtle test that he was being given then, without even realizing. 

His third thought, the only correct one, is that he’s in a room with undrawn curtains. To his side, he can tell this is so, a broad, shining rectangle of yellow light. Blinking down at the length of his body, he finds himself in the same shirt from yesterday, unbuttoned and askew, and a heavy, patterned quilt twisted over his legs. Usually it would bother him, to have slept through the night in his clothes from yesterday, but as he soon realizes, his memory of the previous day cut off rather abruptly around the time he entered the bar that evening, and he doesn’t remember going to bed at all. His body hurts, an all-over kind of pain that aches in his spine, and ignites his head in flame, and makes his extremities shake and feel like lead was pumped through his veins. 

A quick glance around him reveals a room he has never seen in his life, an empty, guest-bedroom feeling place, with a table, a single chair, and a large wooden dresser placed imposingly along one bare wall. The window, he realizes after some adjustment to the light, is open, and a draft rushes through and teases at the folded curtain, and lights along his clammy face. He is shivering with cold, and yet his face feels hot, a sticky clump of bandage on his forehead damp with sweat, and a Band-Aid on his chin. 

When he musters the energy to, he launches himself from the bed, kicking away the quilt that ends up mostly on the floor, regardless, and leans across the little wooden room to the window, tearing the curtains along their rod and plunging himself into soft darkness. Standing there, his head softens, and the pounding winds to a stop, where it sits in its pressure and allows him to think clearly again. He is in a room he has never been in. He still has his clothes, his wallet. Next to the bed someone has placed his boots, heels touching, up against the footboard. The Buick must be somewhere in town, probably where he left it outside the bar. He certainly isn’t in town now, the brief look through the window told him that much. Flat, yellow country, all the way down out of sight. 

He picks the quilt off the floor, swallowing down the anxiety at having to confront his rescuers - or whoever they are. He can’t imagine what has happened, in between going to the bar, and now. Unless he fell victim to heat exhaustion, he did so as a boy, once, an awful, embarrassing experience. But who would take him into their home like this? A brief glance at his reflection in the brass of the bed frame reminds him so. He doesn’t look his best, and always thought he sort of resembled a criminal at anything less than his cleanest. Unless he was to be murdered, or used for slave labor, or something malicious he hadn’t considered right away but it would be an awful lot of trouble to patch him up and all, if that was the case. 

The hallway is very much like the bedroom, wooden and sparsely decorated, and he has the silly thought that a man lives in this house, a very straightforward, business-driven man, who definitely cannot be the one who he remembers now, the one who drug him from the bar last night, no, it couldn’t be. In an effort to alert any occupant of his consciousness, he closes the bedroom door behind him with a soft, but firm click, and listens for any sign of motion. Then he walks slowly up and down the hallway, to find two more closed doors, and on the other end, an opening into a small kitchen, and a light-filled room with a radiator standing tall at the corner, a round, black box of a television on a stand, and a large, sprawling couch with a faded, floral appearance. Still, no decorum to be seen, but a clock on the wall, and above the television, perhaps the only indication of artistic sensitivity in the building, a square, dark little landscape painting with a plain wooden frame. In the shadow of the room, and with the pressure in his head, he doesn’t make any move towards it, but stands like a sleepwalking child in the opening of the hallway and looks at the shape of it, with his boots turning slowly where they hang at his side. 

Ahead of him is the front door, and it occurs to him that with his wallet, and his boots, he could easily walk straight out. It shouldn’t be more than a few miles into town, and then he could leave this whole anomaly in his dust. Still watching the door, he sets his back against the trim of the doorway, lifts his foot and puts on one boot, tying it clumsily but effectively with his still unsteady hands. Then the other boot. Then he walks, one foot after the other, with the pressure growing as he stares into the yellow light again beyond the small, square panes in the door, pulls the chain, turns the lock and opens the door.

The light is so great, burning at his eyes and sending the pressure to a magnificent crescendo, that he hardly gets the screen door open, hardly sees it too, but then he is in the open air, standing firmly on the porch, his shoes scraping against the sun-bleached and muddied little mat just outside, and with one hand shielding his eyes from the light, nearly covering them but for the spaces between his fingers, he finds he can walk forward, can stand it well enough. 

Before him is open land, as he expected. Directly in front of him there is a dirt and gravel road, running straight across his line of vision, and as he stares at it, an aging little grey truck ambles to the left, disappearing with aching slowness into the light. To his right, there is only land, and as he walks to the end of the porch, setting his free hand down against the peeling white paint on the bannister for balance, he can see in the distance long white fences and the structure of a barn, or maybe a stable, some kind of ranch facility from what he can tell. In an effort to get a clearer look around himself, maybe catch sight of a human being, he comes down from the porch and walks straight out into the heat, turning around to find a very clean looking pickup truck in the shade of the house, but no occupant. 

Around this time, the pain turns so incredible that he has to wince to keep it from seeping out, he feels like a can of something shaken up, like the sun is setting a fuse somewhere alight. For a moment, he feels himself falling unconscious, and lowers himself to his knees, and mid-descent, he sees the figure. 

In the harsh light, it is the shape of some creature he cannot identify, a creature from fairytales, with the head of the horse positioned so directly towards him, that it is lost in the silhouette, and all he sees is the equine body, and the head and shoulders of a man. In his condition, the only reaction he can compose is to stay where he is, staring quietly ahead at it until his vision returns to fuzziness, and by the time the thin horse’s legs have come to a standstill a few feet away, and a pair of brown boots have appeared from seemingly thin air, and are coming forward to stop at his knees. Someone is bending down in front of him, their hands on his arms, their hands lifting him, he has returned to that vague state of existence where all he can do is follow where he is directed, back along his tracks, up the steps of the porch, and inside the door, then collapsing to his side on the couch he had seen upon leaving, left to breathe and to blink, and to wait until the pain goes away. They are speaking to him, the head and shoulders-end of the Centaur from outside, but he doesn’t hear it. They are placing a glass in his nervous hands, filled with cold water, ice too, but he doesn’t feel it. They are telling him to drink, and he drinks. 

“I don’t suppose there’s any reason to asking how you’re feeling.” 

Assuming they are correct, he stays silent, and blinks until the room takes shape around him, the floor and walls, the television and that little painting. Something white and cylindrical takes shape in his palm, flat calloused fingers trailing behind it.

“Take two of these, I’m making you a coffee. It’ll wake you up. Now keep drinking that water.” 

The voice carries a thick accent, but not quite the one from his savior at the bar. He doesn’t look much like him, either. This man is taller, not clad in flannel but in a high pair of jeans, and a faded, thin yellow shirt, and boots. He thought he had been wearing a hat, like he has seen men wear ever since entering this part of Texas, but his black hair is spiked in sweat, and it occurs that he must have removed it. This realization, that he isn't the man from the bar, sparks memories. A bar fight, that’s what it was, he flung himself into a bar fight, and the man there must have taken his act of defense to heart, and removed him from the premises, somehow. But where was that man? And who is this? 

“Do you know what happened to me? This seems the easiest way to get these questions answered, so that's what he asks. With his back turned, it is hard to tell what this new man, presumably the owner of this house, thinks about his directness, as he fills a stained little coffee pot with water and clatters it down into the percolator before turning to eye him, tugging the edge of a blue bandana over his mouth, wiping the sweat off his jaw.

There is a funny strictness about how he carries himself, a seriousness about him, like he would stake his life on every flex of a muscle, every slight of his hand. There is something militaristic about how he holds his head up, even when roughly extracting from his back pocket a cigarette and a match, shoving it between his teeth, sending the coffee dribbling down the side of the pot when he pours it too quickly. 

"I got a call from a ranch hand of mine last night asking for a ride out of town. Said you two got in a bar fight, and you got a bad concussion, couldn't stand on your own. And well, he was right. I'm sure you can feel it. Jim said it was a bottle." He taps his own forehead and he instinctively raises his hand to the bandage there. "Big bloody mess. Well, we got you back here, patched you up, thought it would be most sensible to put you up in the guest room." 

"That was thoughtful of you." 

"Well, it sure was a lot nicer than leaving you for the cops to find. Having to spend the night in jail, with a bump like that on your head. It was real good of Jim to decide to bring you here, whatever his intentions were, you know" He makes a strange gesture with his hand, with the cigarette held up and sending smoke trembling about in the air. 

“What...what intentions would those be?” 

The same, strange gesture. He doesn’t need to brush off the question, it is perfectly clear without any effort that he won’t elaborate. Out of courtesy, he stands to accept the cup of coffee, but immediately regrets it when he feels himself go dizzy again. 

“Where is he now, this hand?” 

“Jim? Not a clue. He may be a hard worker, and a damn good horse trainer, but he’s a drifter. He’ll be back around when he feels ready. He only stayed long enough last night to drop you off. He thinks I don’t mind playing fucking housewife, no offense to you.” 

For a moment he sits and drinks the coffee, and looks at his boots, and tries not to seem disappointed. He hasn’t drank coffee in a long time, he realizes, and forgets the bitterness of it, nothing like a cup of tea, strange and rich. By now, his head feels much better, and as easily as he could chalk it up to the pills he took, and the coffee, he can’t help thinking it must have something to do with his strange host, the firmness of him, the odd security he provides. As if he senses this pattern of thought, he pops the cigarette back in his mouth, drags his left hand over his thigh and holds out one broad, sun-tanned hand down to him. 

“It’s Christopher Pike. You can call me what you want, everyone around here has it a little different. You got a name, stranger?” 

That single question sends his joints stiff, and with his hand encompassed by Christopher Pike’s, the dramatic sliver of his mind says to fake unconscious once more, that it’s the most logical way out of the situation. 

“Not one I can remember being too proud of.” For a split second, there is a worried glint in his eyes - ice blue, which cut a startling contrast with his nearly black hair. Like maybe the concussion gave him worse amnesia than anticipated, but it passes, and he takes his hand away, returns it to his cigarette, which has been dropping ash on the kitchen floor all the while. 

“Well, you remember, you let me know. A name is a useful tool, you may not think you need one, but one day you’ll sure wish you had one. “ 

He isn’t so sure about that, but he doesn’t say to, fills his mouth with coffee, and glances up at the painting on the wall. A sunrise. Bathing the open, black land in red, touches of yellow here and there. Or was that a sunset? He doesn’t pay much attention to either while driving. 

“I should go, really, I should. How far is it into town? I left my car in a parking lot.” 

“Not a chance. Not in your condition.” The way Christopher Pike laughs makes him self-conscious in a way he hasn’t often felt in his life, like he is an immense disappointment to him, but he seems to catch on to this face, because he leans back against the kitchen counter, and folds his arms. “I can drive you back tonight, but I wouldn’t be so sure of yourself behind the wheel. You can stay the night if you want, stay as long as you feel you need to.” 

The idea of being trapped out in the country in this way is a claustrophobia-inducing prospect, especially considering Pike doesn’t seem to have intentions of telling him which direction the town is in, but he is very hospitable, and perhaps the refusal comes from a place of care. He asks more questions, asks him if he is hungry, but he doesn’t imagine eating would do anything for his condition, as they aptly begin to call it. Pike asks if he plans to stick around town, where he’s heading, and he tells him he isn’t so sure, that he’s very much like Jim, he supposes, just an aimless drifter. 

They were always like animals, Jim always reminded him of a wild horse, as high as a fence might be built, he'd jump it. He always thought of the two of them that way, though he was always more sensitive to the flight of birds, the unparalleled capabilities to move over the earth in their own bodies. It all stemmed from a poem he heard years ago, not long after he first left home, and some reality hidden inside that he carried with him for a thousand miles. He is telling Pike he's low on cash, and may stick around after all, find some job to do, something to help stock up. A vague thought of selling his coat, lining his clothes with feathers instead in the cold months. He is on that strange train of thought again, just like that. 

“You won't have trouble there. You seem like a hard worker. Maybe too hard, actually.” He pauses, the silence stretches between them for a long moment, and he fingers a chip in his coffee mug. The whole thing is riddled with chips along the base, little flecks missing. Still functional, but with a deep mortality. "You could always help out around here. Get room and board out of the deal. For that matter, you could just set up camp here." 

"What sort of work?" The question he would like to ask more is: Why do you trust me? 

"Stable boy. Whatever we need, really. It's a hot summer, and i'm in negotiations with a few men interested in racehorses. We need to groom up who we got, and see who's fastest. And there's hay to be baled, corrals to be cleaned. I know Jim would appreciate someone maintaining his stablehouse with him, putting the horses out in the morning, bringing them in at night, feeding them. I'd even just appreciate someone riding over and bringing me coffee, for that matter." 

"I don't - I mean, I can't ride a horse." 

“What’s with this stutter of yours?” Before he can answer, Pike has a hand raised as if to apologize, he uses his hands very liberally, in the place of words he hasn't thought up quite yet. "I mean, you ain’t shy, I can tell that much." 

“I suppose I’ve just been on the road too long. I haven’t had a conversation in a long time.” 

“That’s not it. Where are you from?”

The chips in his mug become fascinating again, little basins of rough ceramic. 

"I’d rather keep that to myself, if you don’t mind." 

He isn't quite sure how it affects him, to know that Pike finds him amusing. Perhaps it should be complementary, to know he can make such a straightforward-acting man crack a smile only by answering his questions. 

"So you'd take the stutter over whatever accent you got, is that it?" 

"I suppose it is. I still can't ride a horse." Pike smiles at him again, and for the first time since he left, he thinks that he won't mind staying still for a while. 

“You’re never too old to learn.” 

Against his knee, something hard bounces and shocks him awake. Beside him, there’s a sheepish apology, and he realizes a bump in the road had knocked the barrel of the gun against his leg, and that he still has the gun clenched in his hand, the gun Jim handed to him on the fire escape, has slept with it there, in his hand, and the safety is on, he can see the metal bit, but the idea of it still raises a lump in his throat. How he had laid there all night with it, like a teddy bear. He lays it on the floor, and looks at the red marks from the handle in his palm. 

It might be midday. He is in the car with Jim, who is driving about seventy-five still and not saying anything, there is a pain in his back, and they are surrounded by desert on all sides. 

"You have to take me back." He says. 

To his left, Jim's hand flexes atop the leather wheel. The question flashes in his mind of how he got a hold of a car like this, but something tells him it isn't his, maybe it's borrowed. Jim has never driven a car like this. Jim drove old, keyed up and dirty-windowed cars, and tired horses, and he never dresses crisply, always wrinkled shirts, and scuffs on the toes of his boots. His forehead wrinkles, when he hears him speak, but he doesn't take his eyes off the road. 

"I left my horse." 

The car begins to seem like a locked little room he's been chased inside, and trapped, just around the time he realizes he made an insurmountable mistake in leaving the horse to begin with. And like he has been ripped apart from himself, like the ceiling of the car is coming down on the top of his head. 

“I shouldn’t have come with you. It all happened too quickly, I never meant to come. I wasn’t thinking straight, with all the gunfire." 

"We'll run straight into them; you know that." 

"Then you drop me off in the next town, and I'll hitchhike my way back." 

"Spock." It’s said through a strained little smile, a desperate, too polite way of asking him to shut up. Which strikes him just as oddly as the rest of it, because three years ago he’d just go ahead and tell him so, and he’d appreciate the honesty.

“It doesn’t matter.” It also begins to occur to him something deeply saddening about their position, and his reunion with Jim after nearly three years passing. That he looks different from the image in his head. There is a startling lack of the boyishness in Jim that annoyed and attracted him back in their days on the ranch. His hair isn't as golden as it once was, perhaps he spends less time in the sun, faded to a burnished ghost of what it used to be, and not slicked back like it always was, gelled and combed so a curling strand would spill over his forehead when he’d be bucked off a horse. His eyes are rimmed with shadow, and the only trace of his smirk seems to be the crease at the corner of his mouth. He looks haunted, much more so than he imagines he would in the event that he had just stayed. He has always looked at him and seen Peter Pan, always raised his head to the night sky and thought of him hidden behind starlight. Has Khan done this to him? What horrors does Jim expect at his hands, that he has to run like a frightened rabbit day after day from him? 

"I’m not letting you do that.” Even his manner of breathing is different. “Listen, we’ll make a detour somewhere and try to cut around behind them. It’ll throw me of course, but…” His thought trails away, he lifts one hand and rubs it down his face, and that seems to be the end of it. 

“Who are they? This Khan, and his gang, I only just found out they existed at all. What did you do to anger him so intensely?” 

For a second, he fears Jim won’t answer him, will just refuse, and then he will never know if he should be fighting for him or not. But he blinks, bites his lip and then sucks in a breath as if to say it all at once. 

“It’s rough. I... it’s a mistake, on my part, just a dumb mistake. Khan is a horse thief.” 

“A biker horse thief?” 

“Well, he didn’t used to have the bike. None of them did, they were just horse thieves. They’d ride in on horseback, get away with it sneaky like that, over the hills. Classic, you know. They stole five good horses right out from under Pike’s nose. So I got together some of the boys, you know, Mitch, and Lee Kelso, and ambushed them one night, you know, chased them off over the hills, shot over their heads with the emergency rifles, really scared them.” 

“That’s it?” 

“Well, I found out Khan’s sort of a man of his pride, and apparently I did a number on it when I chased him out of town like a chicken. He just showed up one day and pointed a gun at me and told me to get running. So that’s just what I’ve done.” 

He can tell that Jim’s done talking, and even though the story puts a bad taste in his mouth, and seems to simple even from his limited knowledge of Khan, he has no idea the mechanisms of the so-called vaquero’s mind, and how his experience of the situation lines up with Jim’s. Perhaps his pride is only that precious to him. 

“So, what’s your plan?” 

“Lose ‘em.” 

“Lose them?” 

“Yeah, I mean. I got a place I’m headin’, I’m not just blindly darting around the west. I’ve been winding my way towards San Francisco, just outside it, where I’ve got myself a little hiding place. No way Khan will infiltrate there, if he even gets close, me and my friends will be on him before he can tie his hair back. They really know how to hide a man up there.” And even though he has no clue in his head what Jim could be referring to, there’s a glint in his eye that hasn’t been there for three years, a cheerful tone to his voice, that fades into something more anxious, something quieter. “You should come with me.” 

The claustrophobic quality the cab has taken on since his awakening bursts open before he can process it, the almost white light of the desert is dimming like a broken bulb, and he is somewhere he has pledged never to return to, somewhere deeper in the recesses of his psyche than Chris Pike’s living room on a summer afternoon. He nearly misses Jim’s scrambling explanation, can hardly hear him over his own internal, fevered screaming. 

“I mean, just until San Francisco. If you keep wandering around this way, Khan might cross your path again. And I don’t know what he’d do if he got ahold of you - at the least, he’d find out where my little hiding spot is, and that’s the last thing I, or anyone really wants to happen.” 

Despite his chest feeling like a solid rock, he hears his own stomach rumble, and in an instant Jim has dropped his point long enough to gesture at the back seat and tell him where to find food. He hasn’t eaten since before Khan. He wonders if he will continue measuring the events of his life in that way. Before, he had always measured them as before Jim, after Jim, and in between - so monumental the effect of those periods had been on his psyche. Now, everything felt different. And Jim is correct, despite any bias there might be in his offer. If he goes back now, even if he backtracks, varies his course, Khan very easily could have scouts posted in anticipation of that very thing. He knows now, he must, that he and Jim are connected in some way, and he may come as an asset to their strange pursuit. 

“Can you get the map out of the glovebox?” 

He does so, but hesitates before handing it over, then opens it himself. 

“Where are we?” 

“Well, if you’ll just hand it to me-” 

“No, I’ll look. Just tell me where we are.” 

“Does my driving still scare you?” 

“That’s ridiculous.” 

He has never painted, but the desert around them begins to feel like a long, dirty swipe of ochre, the brush held by a hand out of sight, and laying it down just before they drive over it, continuing and continuing with no sign of running out of paint. It reminds him of the painting in Pike’s living room, though that was all in darks and this is in lights, this reminds him of Jim, this yellow. Jim eventually lets up teasing him, and allows him to read off the map as he drives, and he quickly determines a route for them to backtrack upon that he colors in a wobbling line with ballpoint pen. He doesn’t speak any more about the San Francisco proposition, but he does talk about San Francisco. 

They drive for the rest of the day, until they’re both hungry and Jim tells him to dig out some of the stores. It is much nicer store than his horseback supply: bread, and jars of preserves, and even crushed little packs of beef jerky. And water. Several bottles of it, one of which he knocks back in only a few gulps in between talking about his trip to San Francisco the first time, someone that he had met, the antics he found himself in, a brush with the law that he thought would be the end of him, and started him on a “straight path” again. 

“They know I stop at night. I really should have been less predictable to them, but I like driving through the day instead of the night, I don’t know. If you take the wheel in a couple of hours, maybe I can catch a nap and we’ll be back in Winslow before daybreak.” 

After that, they don’t talk. The journey is an uninterrupted one, just a stop for gas where Jim steps out and leans against the side of the car and stretches his hands above his head, which nearly untucks his shirt. With all the ways he is different now, he sleeps the same, like he’s trying to fold himself into a drawer. 

At some point after the sun has dipped under the flat line of the desert, and the shadowless darkness turns every yellow thing blue, he turns his eyes from the road for only a second, and feels like a much greener version of himself, like he is still driving the Riviera west across the American South, back before he had ever even seen a horse, back before Jim, before Pike. Back as a tousled-feathered, awkward fledgeling of himself, when there wasn’t even the imagining of a body in the passenger seat, not the dream of one. Beside him, Jim turns over, away from him, and though he can’t be sure if he is fully awake or in-between, he sets his jaw and looks at the road, and whispers across the blue a question he only half wants the answer to. 

“When did you go back to the ranch?” 

His answer is not immediate, leaving suspense just up to the moment he will accept he was really sleeping, and didn’t hear it at all. But then he clears his throat, half-turns his head forward to the road, just enough to give the impression of his attention. 

“It would have been August. August of ‘71.” 

A mile marker streaks past them in the night, and he realizes he’s driving nearly as fast as Jim, and slowly brakes until he is at fifty, a comfortable number, and under the speed limit, too. Jim had called himself straight, and yet he had been cruising at twenty over the speed limit nearly all day. 

“Once I settled in in San Francisco, I sent Chris my address. You know, just so the two of us could keep up. And I thought he might let you know about it too, so if you had anything to say...I don’t know. He told you, didn’t he?” 

“He told me.” As illogical as it is to do so, he hopes that admission hurts Jim. To know he flat out had no intention of speaking to him, or at the least, couldn’t be bothered to. Which was more hurtful? To have a few hard feelings, or none at all? 

“Number One sent me the letter that got me back. I thought it might’ve been you, but I guess she was the only one who thought I should know. I borrowed this car - I lost mine months before - and drove all the way back as soon as I could get things tied up back there.” 

There is nothing to say. Again, the car seems to contract around them both, a metal cage barreling down the highway towards their divergence. And when they reach that point, between animal and machine, what will he say? Will he speak at all, or just wait, like he always seems to have done, for Jim to formulate the words that should be said? 

☆

The closer they get to that town where it happened - where he once again felt the weight of Jim’s hand on his, high above the buildings, and everything - the less air there feels to be around them. He even considers rolling the windows, but he imagines he will feel enough of the cold desert breeze when he reaches his horse again. 

Just outside of town, Jim straightens up, and perhaps he imagines the despondency in his tone as he asks to pull over just outside the town itself, just in case. For a moment he thinks Jim means to leave him on the outskirts, but when he pulls over behind the cover of a billboard, and Jim gets out, he mumbles something about walking him over, maybe grabbing a coffee, even though it is obviously much too late in the night for a store to be open. He walks in silence, trailing behind like a dog, like he’s waiting for the correct time to strike, and it occurs to him that he wouldn’t mind Jim smashing him over the head with his gun, just like the night they met, and dragging him back to the car and on to San Francisco, but he will never admit it. 

When they finally slip into the alley where she is waiting, and he immediately tears the bag of feed from the pack still sitting atop her back and slices it open with his pocket knife, he hears Jim chuckle from behind him. When he turns, and her nose is happily bumping against his palms through the bag, he’s already waving away the question, sticking his hands in his pockets as he checks them over. 

“That’s Chris’s horse.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“You heard me. That’s Tango. He knows you took her?” 

“He offered I take her.” 

"Is that right?" 

"Are you insinuating I took her without his express permission?" 

"No, no, not at all. I just...well I think it's awfully coincidental that you ended up with...well it seems like you're clinging to something you claimed to be through clinging to a long time ago." 

The empty bag goes in the dented metal trashcan shoved against the brick building at his side. Tango is bucking into his hand, shaking her head, anxious to get moving, and he is hit with a pain of regret at having run off from her so. Knowing the damage it could do, to be abandoned in such a way, without warning and amid such fire. His legs are cramped from the car, he feels all bent up, but scaling her side, getting his head up where it belongs, then slinging his pack over his shoulders, fills him with a comfort that tunes out all the rest. 

He almost forgets Jim, really, and it has nothing to do with how much he would like to. He’s still standing square in the middle of the alley, hands on his hips, but the way he looks up at him is strange, unlike he expects, so unlike that he has to look away. 

“Do you want a ride back?” 

“No, Spock, I’m not a squirrel. I use stirrups, you know. Like a regular person.peIt's harsh, but it's the most refreshingly normal thing he's said all night.

“I’ll follow you out.” 

It begins to feel very useless. He recalls a memory now, of being on horseback, and Jim on the grass beside him, rising from the fireside to snatch his ankle out of the air, pull him down like he’s starting a fight. It comes from a hazy time, one he isn’t apt to reminisce upon, however happy he was. Or felt that he was. But he still steers close to his side, wills his tucked away hand to shoot out and grab him again like the mouth of a snake, tearing him from his own body.  
At the billboard outside of town, a man is crouched down beside Jim's car, something metal in both his hands. 

A pair of pliers, and a gun hanging at his side, and he is twisting something on one of the tires. He recognizes him immediately as one of Khan’s men, a blonde smooth-faced boy who leaps to his feet and jumps on his motorcycle, swerving off onto the highway and leaving a cloud of yellow dust in his wake before Jim can even pull his gun. 

Jim standing in his wake, his gun half-drawn, and then sliding it back, as if his hand is suddenly too heavy for it, is more forlorn an image than has ever existed of him. Even more so than Spock with both hands on his head, the morning after his concussion.

Maybe he measures it incorrectly. Maybe his life was cut and reworked the instant that bottle hit his head, maybe it shook something out of or into place. He keeps looking at the back of Jim's head, as he walks forward, turns and crouches by the tire, then walks in a circle to each of the other three. 

"Cut my valve stems." Without pause, he's got his keys out, the car unlocked, and is pulling things out and into his pockets. He isn't quite sure what this means, or what he should be doing to help, but he knows there won't be time for Jim to get to a mechanic, and knows this means he's reliant upon him. That even though all he's got is a horse and maybe 100 dollars left in his wallet, he's the best Jim's got. "We have to leave it here, I can't risk stayin' still." 

"We can cut across the desert, to the northwest. I'm 50% sure there's a city that way." 

"Fifty percent?" 

"Forty nine percent." Point sixty-three, he adds under his breath, just loud enough that Jim hears it and shakes his head.

And should it make him happy? To be refused his own loneliness like this, without having to open his mouth, without having to do anything but lower his hand to accept the two bottles of water, and his map (even though it is the same as his own, it is still Jim's map, and he can't help but think there must be some difference), and store them both carefully inside his pack, and wait for him to close the door and pocket the keys again before turning back to him. Jim should lock it, he thinks, not knowing why. Except that he doesn't fancy the idea of Khan's men where they had been sleeping. 

Jim comes right up to him, head craned up and smiles, a smile that feels out of place, a smile that is too vibrant. He lets down his hand and he takes firm hold of his wrist, then jumps harder than he's ever seen and latches on to Tango, scrambling up until he can grab his waist for balance, and swing his leg over her back with a loud, dramatic sound of exertion. 

“I didn’t mean to call you a squirrel." 

"It's alright." 

"I still don't get why you ride bareback. This is already killing me." 

He tries not to think about Jim holding his waist, Jim's face inches from the back of his neck, and it isn't hard, because soon all he can think about is the face of the biker, the empty look that he had recognized as fear but wonders now if it was only adrenaline. He had not raised his gun. For that matter, neither had Jim. He felt like a background character. Like the boy in black running forward to strike the set between scenes. This is a two-man play between Jim and Khan, with minor players to help along the narrative. Is he one of those? A simple device in their strange ballet? The whole idea instills in him a sense of dread. 

Remembering how tired Jim had looked to him when they first drove away, he wonders too about his stamina. Khan has been draining him, turning him blue, like a bat in the night, a pale shapeshifter. How far will he drive him? And, will he reach San Francisco, and what will happen when he does?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact time! Tango is a real Star Trek character if you, like me, remember absolutely jack shit about The Cage :)  
> https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tango


	3. Leila

It isn't a good idea to stop in Leupp . He knows it the moment he suggests that they do, and he knows it better by the lump that rises in his throat as they skirt around the low buildings and soft-glowing streetlamps to enter the main street where he knows the motel is. Right on the outskirts, the tall, sprawling red building stands just as dusty and jailhouse-reminiscent as it did before, with its rows of doors stacked on top of one another and long, straight railing bars. He swings his leg back, the heel of his boot knocking into Jim's shin to get him off, and he slides down, pressing his hands at his back and then fishing out his wallet as he makes his way to the front office. 

“I’ll get one on the top floor. Give us a vantage point if we’ve been somehow followed by Ghost Rider.” 

He tucks Tango away between two windows around the side of the building, in a dark, grassy little area with a lightpost to tie her reins too. While crossing the flat, relentless ground between Winslow and here, he and Jim had spotted water, an offshoot of the Colorado River to their side, and Jim had protested disembarking, but allowed them to rest and let her drink. He had fed her too, and now he stands in front of her in the dark and cards his fingers through her mane. They aren’t the type to talk, not out loud, not like Jim used to with his horse, or like Pike sometimes did under his breath, when it was just the two of them in the stable. 

He remembers something, and pulls his pack off his own back to dig through, deep in the bottom, a crumpled cardboard box, and inside it a plastic bag, full of rough cubes of sugar in a similar state. He paws out maybe a handful of these, chipped and smashed as they are, and holds them under her nose, smiling against his will when she seems to instantly perk up. He remembers Pike saying to him how she liked them, Pike with a jacket pocket filled with sugar cubes, nearly every day. The intimacy of his hand under her nose, Pike’s hand where his sits now, against the velvet softness of her lips, the carefulness with which she cleans the sugar from his hand. 

He remembers this motel. The feeling skates up the back of his neck, old, bad memories from too long ago to rely upon. Even standing out in the night air sets the hair rising along his arms. Wiping the grains on his jeans, he walks out to the staircase against the wall, and slowly scales it, checking down the row of doors until he finds the one with the bandana tied around the doorknob. An old sign between them. Inside, he can just make out the sprawled lump across the bed - of which there is only one - seemingly deep in unconsciousness. 

The fact of the single bed leaves him motionless in the doorway after closing the door as soft as he can manage. Of course, there could have been no choice. Of course, it could have been the only option. Like it was the only option back on the ranch. Like Jim had lost his keys again, and it was so cold outside, and Spock, please open your window, I’m freezing, Spock, just let me share your bed, Spock, I swear Chris has no clue what he’s sayin’ about me, Spock, look how blue my hands are. 

But maybe it was cheaper. He doesn’t know how much money Jim has on him, has no clue in the world, if he’s been finding work, or how much he still has saved from his days on the ranch - if he even has that money at his disposal, anymore. Somehow, his rigid standing up against the closed door, hardly breathing causes Jim to stir, and he watches as he bolts half upright, hardly seeming too notice him square in the doorway, pulls the gun out of his pants with a hand he pretends not to notice shaking, and stretches back towards the bedside table, which he yanks open and tosses the gun inside, right on top of the bible with a dull thump. 

Maybe it was just out of habit. 

He remembers how it occurred to him that Jim and he never kissed that night he got his concussion. It took two days to see him again, he had been following behind Pike, trying to seem anything like the rough rancher men he saw here and there as they toured the grounds, his chin up, trying to wear the bandage still plastered across his head as a battle scar, a sign of masculinity, but he is all to aware of the shoulders of Pike’s shirt on him, how they hang loose, and the pastiness of his skin in comparison to the sun-tanned length of every arm coming out to shake his hand. They find Jim in the stable, and immediately he and Pike fall into discourse over his abandonment of his duties, for a full day, and he won’t be getting paid for that, and Jim insisting he’s made up for it as he slaps the end of a rubber hose against the metal of a water trough, speaking in the same charming, lose tone he used in the bar, despite there seeming to be clear proof of its effectiveness in a conversation. 

Somewhere in the midst of their altercation, Jim glances over his shoulder, and he can see him carrying on, talking to Pike but looking just enough to the side that he meets his eye instead, and the worst little smirk on his face as he feels Jim’s eyes roving over the bandage on his head, his shoulders. Then, before he even begins to think about the kiss that could have happened, Jim cocks his head in his direction, and changes the subject. 

“Is this your new Number One?” Whatever joke lies in that remark seems to be between them, but Pike doesn’t laugh, and steps back to free space between all of them. 

“Actually, he’s yours. New stable hand. You’re going to teach him how to take care of the horses, and if you so happen to miss a day and leave all the work for him, he’s getting both your salaries.” 

A dark look growing on his face. 

“I don’t know what game you’re trying to play here, but it ain’t funny. I’ll teach him all right, and maybe he’ll get my salary or maybe not, but don’t think you’re gonna get some self-satisfaction out of it.” 

The pink cut at the corner of his mouth is already half-healed.

It's the first time he really sees Jim, in the light and with a clear head. But there is no dramaticism, no first impressions, a strange sense of knowing already seems to exist between them, likely from their forced intimacy the night of their meeting. He doesn't quite know what to make of it, but his existence is completely unremarkable. He can look at Jim for hours, think about his neatly combed hair, the several missed buttons of his shirt that expose almost his entire chest when he bends over to fetch a discarded pitchfork, but none of it will surprise him.

He waits, staring down at Jim’s face in the dark. His arms up around his stomach. How much did he sleep in the car? How much the night before? He knows he isn’t sleeping now, knows his breathing. More than anything he knows he wouldn’t sleep this way, where he collapsed in the center of the mattress without any courtesy. The difference in him now is fresh and painful, though, and for a second he isn't sure anymore.

He remembers learning to ride a horse. Jim didn’t teach him that, like he begrudgingly taught him how to clean the stables, and brush a horse’s mane, and how to feed them. He still remembers Pike placing the sugar cube in his hand, telling him how to warm Tango up to be ridden, she’s friendly, but she’s just like us, you know. She likes to be asked. 

At first, it was hard. He didn’t know how to control another living thing in that way, not for a while. He felt more like the horse was carrying him on her back. He was always thinking about whether he was slow to learn, but never had the courage to ask, and Pike never lost patience, not even when he unbuckled the saddle, and realized it was much easier, much less structured to ride bareback, despite the warnings of everyone who ever saw him. 

In time, he learned why Pike warned him so sternly about Jim. For a long, strange time, he pretended he didn’t understand, and that Pike must be wrong about it. Then, one day, he asked Jim flat out why he didn't show up for work. Why he wandered so much, and Jim had said to him: Find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. 

“I don’t understand.” And Jim had laughed at him. And out of nowhere, he had stood up from the stable floor, looked him straight in the eye, and put his hand on his ear. 

In the moment, it had made him feel fainter than he imagines he would with five bottles smashed over his head. Jim grabbing him by the ear, the right ear, at that, and holding it between his fingers, and looking at it with the odd confusion that only someone paying attention, and entirely comfortable with him ever would. 

“Sorry, I’ve never had a chance to look at it up close.” He laughs again, and runs his thumb up into the shell of it, right up to the twisted point. “What happened to it?” 

“Nothing.” 

“That’s really something. You’re like Spock. Halfway, at least.” 

The moment had turned their entire relationship on its head. Suddenly, whatever glance he’d feel from Pike when they talked together, whatever offhanded comment he’d make about his productivity didn’t matter. Pike could tell him the worst possible things about Jim, and somehow, he feels he still would clean the stable with him. Because he is brave enough to touch him. To come unafraid to the strangest parts of his existence. Not even Pike ever tried to notice it.

This night, in the motel in Leupp, Arizona, he stands, or maybe Spock, the part of him that is Spock, that is also the part of him that is Jim’s, and waits until Jim moves again, realizes where he is and lifts himself from the bed, bending over to untie his shoes, moving over when he sees him still standing - not asking him why he stands there, so motionless - and he wonders if they’re going to have sex. They don’t, of course, but for a moment, he thinks they might. Almost anticipates it, caught up in his hands, the line of his shoulders that is still hard and asking to hold his head on it, until he starts thinking again, and reminds himself - 

Jim had come back. 

That fact grinds at him, grinds at the world around him, grinds at the image of Jim beside him, it grinds at his stomach and makes him sick. He had come back. And not only had he come back, but he had continued working for Pike after coming back. He had come back, and stayed. After all his poetic waxing about needing to free himself of the ranch, being unable to stay around for Spock, if for nothing or no one else. Spock, who he was once feverishly adoring of, couldn’t stand to spend a single night away from. He had known, surely Pike would have told him that his Spock had left just a month prior to search for him, and he had stayed anyways. It just went to show that despite what either of them may claim, they both have more affection for him than for each other. And the reality of that makes him not want to look at Jim, let alone touch him in any way. 

His dreams are full-moon dreams, vivid and twisting, amalgamations of places and people he once knew, images of this very city, of people here he hopes not to cross paths with. Through it all, he is hardly aware of Jim across the bed from him, hardly aware of an occupied space there at all. He is still angry with him, as useless as he knows it is right now.

☆

Spock wakes up from the sensation of someone trying to rip his spine away from his flesh, of arms and legs being removed, of a sudden, bone-deep chill. With one hand, he finds the end of the flung-aside comforter and winds it around himself again, even with all the violence, his only instinct is to keep warm. Across the room there are footsteps, the rumble of the radiator starting up, a door closing. Silence. A door opening, then the rustle of fabric, a zipper. 

"I'm getting us some food. Do you want anything specific? I saw a grocery store, but I think down the street there’s a diner, probably still open for breakfast.” 

“No, I don’t mind. You can afford that?” He watches Jim put one arm through his jacket, pause, then place a hand flat against the window to his side and take it off again, murmuring something about how cold it is in the room. 

“I sure can.” 

“You’re going to need a new car. Or we go back for the Jaguar, and try to -” 

“I’ve got a plan, don’t worry.” Laughing, smiling at him. For a moment he thinks he catches the old familiar smirk, but Jim turns too quickly, sliding the chain, and then disappearing into the white world outside. 

For a moment, he lays where he woke, wrapping the comforter tighter around his chilled bones, wondering if the radiator really works, and why it is so cold if it’s the time the little analog on the bedside table claims. He remembers a theory of ghosts; how cold a room would get when an otherworldly presence wandered inside. But he had been cold all night, so if that was so, what were they waiting for. Could a ghost be anything other than a person? Could a ghost be yourself, the misplaced subsequent nesting dolls of your own body? 

Shifting himself, his bones cracking as he pulls himself to the headboard, staring straight at the door Jim departed through, he discovers that he’s almost naked. 

Two things make more sense. For one, that’s why he must be so cold. Two, that’s why Jim had smiled at him. History repeats itself in this way, he feels that he needs a new shell. That cold night Jim came to his window, slithering through in the dark with a dizzy look and claims of losing his keys - not that he doubts that was the truth, but he can’t believe he wouldn’t just pick the lock, he’s seen him do it before. Just coming in for some warmth. And then kissing him, apologizing over and over when he spoke too loudly and Spock had to cover his mouth. He was so incredibly happy then, happy unlike he’s ever known, like a baby, but when he woke up, his bed was empty again, and just like now, he didn’t know the meaning of it. 

His stomach rumbles. He’s sure they didn’t have sex, though, he would know if they did, even though his memory fails him. Was he sleeping? Were they both? He remembers falling asleep, not touching him, angry with him, for that matter. But he woke tangled up in his arms. Would they really have gone to all the effort of intimacy if not for a clear purpose? Jim always drove him insane with his gentleness, in that way. At times he wished there were more passion in him, or his moderated passion would break free, because maybe it would put some reason to it all. Maybe it would give Spock an excuse for his behavior. Because it wasn’t really his choice. 

But the idea is at the least, very illogical, and he is clearly aware of that. He doesn’t know how long he sits in this way, his hands loose in his lap, staring straight forward at the shining crack under the door, but it ends up being much longer than he should, because there is a click and another shining opening in the dark little room before he even looks around for his clothes, and he’s darting towards the floor with his arms, collecting his shirt, his jeans as he catches a glimpse of Jim’s hands with white plastic bags hanging from his wrists, coffee cups cradled against his side, setting it all down on the wooden table pressed under the window. 

“I couldn’t remember if you still don’t like meat or not. I got you pancakes though, I’m pretty sure you don’t mind those.” 

“Thank you.” 

Jim seems to notice, as well, that he’s making a great effort to redress himself without being noticed, so he turns around, begins to unload Styrofoam cartons from the plastic bags, setting them apart from one another, and the warm scent of syrup and coffee rises through the room. There is only one chair, but Jim picks up his box and his coffee cup, and falls back onto the foot of the bed, taking a long gulp from his cup and setting it between his thighs. 

“I got you tea. You’re still not a coffee man, either, right?” 

“It’s amazing that you remember so much.” 

“Well. Can you pass me the map?” 

He passes Jim the map, which he unfolds across the bed at his side, and stares at without speaking as he eats. Jim did get him tea, which he is very grateful for, if only for how it warms his hands. For ten minutes they don’t speak, Jim looking at the map, and he looking at Jim, eating in silence with their plastic forks, until Jim closes his Styrofoam box, tosses it behind him, and leans over the map as if planning a grand scale sort of assault. 

“Khan’s going to expect me to steal a car.” 

“Why would he expect that?” 

“Cause that’s what I did back when he started chasin’ me in Texas. And cause he knows I ain’t carrying the money to buy one worth it. Which is why I’m not getting a car, honestly or otherwise.” He pauses, standing, walking to the door and sifting around in his coat pockets before extracting a pen and returning to his seat, drawing a hasty circle around the name of the town on the map. “I’m getting a horse.” 

“A horse is sometimes worth more than a car.” Looking past the irony of getting one now, after having started out with one, and Khan just now finding he's on wheels.

“No, no. The ride over here gave me an idea. If I’m cutting across country -” Pen lifted just up off the map, he draws a snaking line around the major highways that would lead to San Francisco. “You know, zig-zagging around, maybe even camping out instead of stopping in motels, I’m sure I’ll throw him off. He thinks I'm trying to outrun him, that's his mistake. And then I’ll be home free.” He can hardly open his mouth to remind Jim that he hasn’t acknowledged his point at all, before he’s writing things across the map, and talking about what stops he should plan on taking, cutting a line across the state in red, like a wobbling scar. “We’ll have to make sure to camp out far from the road, I know Khan likes to set up within sight of it.” 

“You haven't answered me.” 

“I know, I know. I’m sorry, but you know me, Spock. I’ll get one. I have money, I can get a horse. I still have...half my looks, don’t I? And I saw a farm or something on the way in, way out on the outskirts. Looked like stables. With a little luck, I can give a sob story to whoever owns it, maybe set up a payment plan, if their prices are steep. We’ll get money in San Francisco. You have no idea about my network I got up there.” More lines. Vague notes, then the pen clicks, and he tucks it in his breast pocket, fanning out the map in both hands, then folding it so the visible square is the bottom half of California, and the edge of Arizona. “Do you remember our plan? Back on the ranch. We made a plan.” 

“No.” Spock says. 

“You’re lying.” 

“I don’t lie.” He lies. Jim gives him a knowing look, then stands again, tucking the map in his coat pocket once more. He collects his coffee from the floor, knocking back the dregs of it before dropping it in one of the plastic bags he brought from the diner. 

“I still want to do it. The plan. Just now, I said ‘we’, like you were coming with me to San Francisco, and you didn’t even notice.” 

“I noticed.” 

“You didn’t mind the idea enough to point it out. And I think you should come with me, anyways. All the way. Even past San Francisco, I mean. What else are you going to do? Go back to Pike?” 

He’s folding his coat over his arm, walking to the bathroom and coming out with his toothbrush, pocketing that, looking around the room for other misplaced possessions before jumping and hurrying to the nightstand, pulling out his gun and sticking it back in his pants. 

“I mean, we’re going to have to stay in San Francisco for a while. Maybe a year. Khan will give up by then, I know it. But after that, I mean, nature gave us all something to fall back on, right? We save up a little money, and we can go wherever we want. Horses or not. Maybe go down to Mexico. We could even ride over to the east coast. Isn’t that what we used to talk about doing?” 

“You’re getting ahead of yourself.” 

“When have I ever let him catch up? I don't think I've seen him for years.” 

“It’s not something to be proud of. You still don’t know if you’ll be able to get a horse at all.” 

“Way to be optimistic, Spock.” 

“I’m being realistic.” 

As he moves across the floor, something small falls from his coat, that he doesn’t notice, and lads at Spock’s feet. Fishing it off the carpet, he finds it to be a small matchbook, the name of some Californian bar printed on the back. Jim is already talking again, running through his plan, cleaning up the room to leave, and he doesn’t notice, and instead of interrupting his flow of thought, he opts to slip it into his back pocket himself. He doesn’t suspect Jim smokes anymore, anyways. He only ever did a little, only during lazy nights at the ranch, and out in the field and the surrounding woods, where they’d wander and not do much of anything. 

He can’t help a sense of dread about the whole thing. Because he knows the farm on the outskirts of town, would like never to return to it, and definitely does not feel keen on letting Jim coerce the occupants out of a horse. But one of the layers of himself, deep within many others, twists himself up too tightly, and doesn’t seem to be opening any time soon. Jim tells him they should get moving, and he looks down at the half cup of lukewarm tea still tight in his hands, and swallows down the anxiety. 

“I think I’ll pay for another night in this room. You can do it yourself, just come get me when you’ve got the horse.” 

“Absolutely not. I’m not doing it without you, I need you. And you may need to save your money. Cowboy up, Spock, come on.” He’s already smiling again, already offering down his hand to get him on his feet, and he can feel the doll of himself that knows all about the farm, and who lives there, and what they will think about his return up in his throat, lodged there like a bullet. 

☆

It isn’t cold outside at all, the full force of the desert climate hitting him square in the face when he steps out onto the balcony. Jim is reluctant to ride behind him for a second time, tries to convince him to switch, and let him have the reins, but luckily has the restraint to back down when he refuses. The small security of knowing he can pull them to the side and send them galloping in the other direction if he needs to provides enough comfort to keep him composed all the way out of town. 

The whole ride, he is formulating ways to get himself out of going to that farm. Even when they’re in sight of the place, he can see the little blue farmhouse, and the flat roof of the stables, and even the posts of the garden out back. Perhaps it’s all his own fault, for suggesting they come here at all. Perhaps this is just retribution. 

They make it all the way to the outside of the fence, close enough to see the details of the worn paint on the side of the house, the thistle growing in the crevices where a lawn mower wouldn't reach. Three horses lazily grazing in the distant pasture, and no sight of a human. No truck in the driveway. No movement past the dusty window panes. For a moment, the knot in his chest softens, but before he can even sigh with relief, a strong hand pulls it taught. 

"I see someone. A woman, I think. That should make it easier - can you steer a little closer to the fence?" 

“Jim, I’ve been here before.” 

He can feel Jim's head whip around behind him, but he keeps his eyes down at the road, facing himself away from him, and away from who he must have seen. 

"What?" 

"I can't do this. We have to find another way, or you have to do it alone." 

"Why didn't you tell me earlier? What did you do? It's not bad, is it?" 

The answer would take an hour just to get down on paper, he thinks, so he bites his lip and stares all the way down the road, where the sides touch in a single, anticlimactic dot. He can hear Jim saying something under his breath, making it sound lighthearted as he turns himself around, pulling his leg up over Tango's side, making it sound like a joke if you weren't right up there with them. 

"Jesus, Spock. That changes everything, you know." 

Beyond that, he knows whatever plan Jim has, which he surely does have one, Spock's admission has introduced a phenomenal confounding factor into it, even more so that he didn't have the time to explain to Jim what precisely he has done. 

"It's been a while, stranger." He has been so absorbed in the horizon, and his own anxiety, that he doesn't hear Leila approach the fence at all, and if he didn't know better, he'd be sure his lungs refuse in that instant to keep filling. "You brought a friend this time." 

"Jim Kirk. Very glad to meet you." If for nothing else, Jim's eagerness comes as a great relief now, because it gives him the time to glance over, just enough to watch them shake hands and exchange names without really watching, and for a moment not to speak. 

"Very glad to meet you, Mister Kirk. What takes you two through Leupp?" 

"Please, just Jim - Business and pleasure I suppose, up until last night, that is -" He feels Jim's elbow in his back like a cue for something he doesn't know to say. He thinks for the thirtieth time how there really is no reason for his tagging along, since Jim seems to be making quick and charming work on his self-proclaimed "sob story" before he's even off the horse. " - We were just riding around last night, stopped for a bite to eat and someone came right up and stole my horse, if you can believe it-" A glance his way, and a mocking smile on his face. "Guess they were working alone, but they managed to snatch our other saddle, too." 

"Oh, that's awful. I can't imagine what kind of person would steal a horse just like that. It's like we never left prairie days -" 

Even angry, her voice is as soft as a lamb. He always thought of her that way, lambish, maybe it didn't give her enough credit for her stature, but he still thought so. She hasn't changed in that respect, still with all the gentleness that drew him like a moth to flame, back when he was mothlike. And when she glances his way once more, and in the instant before he averts his eyes, he can see all the tenderness of thirteen years ago somehow still burning on the fuel of that one night - 

She looks the same, of course, still blonde and angel-faced, still with garden soil on the knees of her overalls, just as he would expect after this length of time, which bothers him, in some strange, inexplicable way. Almost in a reverse manner to how he thought about Jim for so long, he thinks it would be comforting to see her changed, to have some sign that she’s moved on from that era in which they both existed, briefly upon the same planet. Now he is thinking, I don’t want to land on this planet, and when Jim slides down from behind him, perches instead on the fence, leaning down to Leila and talking in a language that isn’t his own, he considers taking off with Tango towards that little dot, and letting Jim catch up to him when he feels ready to. 

“Spock? That okay with you?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Mister Spock, would you perhaps like to accept the lady’s invitation to stay for dinner tonight and allow our gentle steed a moment of rest in the stables, after having to carry us two all night and morning?” He wants to slap Jim, however innocently he is fluttering his eyelashes at him, for knowing Tango is the way to convince him, and putting it to full use. 

“I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to catch up, after all this time.” Leila chimes in across the fence, and the slap evolves into a full left hook, but he clenches his jaw and his fists in Tango’s rein, and says: 

“That would be fine.” 

“I’ll get the gate.” Leila beams, and then he’s steering Tango inside, feeling as if he’s moving downhill, even on the flat, desert prairie. The gate latching behind his heels like a snare trap. Jim catches up to him and leans in as he’s hopping down, leading the horse into the low, clean stables, smiling and flexing his hand. 

“Very firm handshake. Are you sure you don’t want to take over the sweet talk? Obviously, there’s history you ain’t tellin’ me about here - she looks at you like you’re John fucking Wayne.” 

“We can discuss it after we leave.” 

Jim doesn’t seem satisfied by this answer, but then Leila is at his side again, and he whirls around to listen to her like she’s the moon in the sky, and all Spock can do is turn to the horse and take the package of sugar cubes out again and act completely disinterested, which he is. 

Entering the house itself sets his skin on fire, the house which still smells of flowers left out too long and linen and old paint. It isn’t a messy house, but it is alive, and like her, no different than it was the last time he entered it, except in the subtle arrangement of things, a new mug, a new pair of shoes beside the door. He goes through the motions of pleasantry in a fog, glancing over the still lives over the mantelpiece, accepting a cup of tea, chopping an onion gently passed into his hand at the kitchen counter as she cooks. When the rumble of a truck on gravel alerts him to Elias’ return, he blinks back the haze long enough to greet him, smile at his comment about looking healthier, watch Jim shake the aging botanist’s hand with a charm that nearly gives the impression he is trying to romance either of them. 

If nothing else, Jim seems to enjoy himself greatly. He manages, in fact, to be so lively that it takes the attentions of their hosts and seems to pull it away from Spock, which is immensely comforting as he finds himself seated across from Leila, constantly dodging the attention of her shining, ashen eyes. He isn’t sure that he eats, can’t even register what is on the plate before him, but his consciousness is filled with Jim’s voice, weaving some ridiculous, yet likely true anecdote to Elias from his days in the horse ranch business, then another, another. And all the time he avoids Leila, only enters the conversation when Jim nudges him, asking for his affirmation on a certain event of having to catch the wily bronco who jumped out of the corral and ran clear across their land and into the neighbors, just between the two of them, and Pike being so mad he thought they’d both be fired, even though they were the ones to catch him and drag him back. 

He knows, even without hearing the words for himself, that Leila thinks of their love as an almost, but he only knows it to be an absence. And never had the courage to tell her so. To let her believe she deserves such an absence, because everything about her is immensely loveable - her tenderness with him, for a start. Her tenderness with anyone, for that matter, and for horses, and for plants and all living things down to the bees pollinating her flower boxes on the front porch. And for the dehydrated, skinny, stuttering fledgling that blew through here long before Pike, or Jim or any of it, directionless and empty of most human things, that she offered the utmost tenderness to. The affection. The food. The money. And that took those things, awkwardly tried to return an ounce of tenderness that he didn’t have to begin with, some false expression of affection, basically a lie, and then just blowing out again with the fall breeze, not to be seen again for over a decade. 

He must have broken her heart. He has grown used to the weight of its body on his own. But the most startling part of it all is that she still lives with Elias - the pseudo mentor, and father figure she had only begun to stay with when they had first met. That she seems to be holding out for him, that her life came to a standstill once he left. If she is still as full of yearning as she was then, why couldn't she have snatched up any of the wandering souls that drift through the middle of Arizona, sleeping in the backs of their cars, just shy enough of ferality that they would answer to a knock on the window?

Even with this resilience, this bare-faced courage in his eventual return, he cannot give her false hope. Even for Jim’s sake, even with both their lives on the line. All of hell could be pointing pitchforks and fire at his back, and he still wouldn’t tell Leila Kalomi he loves her. 

At the bedside there is a kerosene lamp, like the rest of the house and its inhabitants, still stuck there without knowledge of the outside. As he sits at the edge of the guest bed, Jim’s spine at his back, and watches the flame, he thinks of all the ways to get out. All the possible ways. As if there are multiple, and they can be weighed in his hands like he used to do - all the paths are muddy, everything he thinks of is tinted with smoke, like the glass bulb of that lamp. 

Jim had so confidently acquiesced to the offer of the guest bedroom by saying they two didn’t mind sharing, even though Spock was halfway to saying he doesn’t mind the couch, it made him nervous. Neither of their hosts seemed to catch this admission as anything but indicative of strong camaraderie, but still he sits up, perches on the end of the bed as far as he can get, just in the off chance they are being watched, from the ceiling or from under the bed itself, or through the floral-curtained window that faces out to the stables and haunts him with the knowledge of their goal. Beside him, Jim turns over in his sleep, arms flung up around his face, and he turns to look at him sleeping, a solid marble expression that isn’t discomforted, but hardened, plagued by something he can’t know. Even though he wants Spock to do this thing, has made it clear to them in whispered moments where they have been alone, he knows Jim isn’t malicious for it. That he only has their best interests in mind, and doesn’t know the depth of the history that makes the task as horrifying as a kind of murder. Even so, he still wants to attack him. What did that say about him? He didn’t used to be so violent. Was that also something he could blame on Jim? Or how he reacted to Jim, what Jim awakened in him, some dormant wolf spirit that was now straining and pushing against his sheepskin. 

He can’t sit still anymore, can’t bear to be so close, so he stands up, moves as quietly as he can across the delicate floorboards, closing the door behind him with a click that seems to ricochet between every single surface in the hallway, and to the front door, in the dark, trying to find his way like through black water. 

Outside, there isn’t a moon, just more black, dim starlight that blues the open plain like an inversion of its lighted existence, and for a moment, with closed eyes and both hands against the porch railing, he feels a draft of hot air, and the distant pounding of a headache beginning in his skull, and the resonating hit of horse hooves behind him, slow, approaching with caution, and then his throat goes tight, almost overwhelmingly so just before he hears the front door swinging open, the screen creaking in front of it, then slamming back with a rattling sound. 

“You’re not leaving, are you?” 

“Not at this moment.” 

In the dark, without Jim, it’s easier to talk to her. He still doesn’t turn to see her, but her shape comes into existence at his peripheral, her arms folded tight, her hair the brightest thing in the desert. 

“What do you need?” He hates the way she phrases it. She hasn’t changed, not one bit. Perhaps he should be the one asking it, what do you need, you’re a gardener, what do you do when a plant refuses to grow? But he never gets the chance, she’s already taking a deep breath, and continuing on, with the same calm, understanding tone, only barely tinted with sleepiness. “For a moment, I thought you might be trying to rob us. All the whispering between you, you know. And I can tell you don’t really want to be here, that it’s a matter of necessity.” 

“I need a horse." he says, hating the sound of it. He doesn’t need a horse. He needs to take responsibility for himself. “I mean that Jim does. Someone’s chasing him, an old horse thief he crossed paths with years ago, and if we both have a horse, we can cut across country and lose him. We have a place set up where we can hide until he gives up his pursuit, up in San Francisco. But we can’t do it with one horse.” 

“Chasing him?” 

“We had a moment, back in Winslow. They want him dead, that much is sure.” 

“The police?” 

“The police aren’t worth it. This man is...he’s dangerous. Jim says getting the police involved would only help him approximate our course.” 

“That’s awful.” 

Jim wanted to seem honest - even with all the inherent irony. He wanted to seem a victim of misfortune, not retribution for his own cruelty. And Spock can respect that, but before he knows it, he's told Leila the whole story, and feels better for it. There was never any chance of him actually coercing her. 

“I was hoping.” She begins, and the small relief he feels at coming clean withers up inside of him, and his hands go tense around the railing. 

How could he say nothing to her about their failed love, pretend so successfully that the thought has never passed his mind, and still hurt her? How horrible could he be at this game, to ruin everything without speaking a single word? 

“I was hoping it meant something, you know. To see you again after so long. I don’t know what it could possibly, you haven’t changed. I mean, you have. But not in that way. You just need a horse.” 

“I’m sorry.” It feels like such a useless thing to say, after everything, and knowing the uselessness of such words in the face of the physical, and very real pain that he would be mitigating with them. “It is a time of great desperation for us two, you must know that.” 

She looks at him, he can feel her trying to catch his eyes again, and in a strange, single moment, he can almost feel the tenderness she holds for him drop from her hand onto the wood slats below, where he imagines it rolls on the edge, and tips straight off between the cracks and under the house. At the corner of his vision, he sees her put her hands up against the sides of her head, gathering her hair up, twisting it up in a knot, then just holding it, not pulling it together with anything, only holding it. 

“It’s alright.” It feels anything but, but he doesn’t dare to say so. “In some universe, I suppose. Maybe it’s the way I want it. But it’s alright.” 

He has nothing more to say after that. The whole matter of the horse is nearly forgotten, suddenly, it seems to be the least important thing, because all he can think about is this awful thing that he’s done, disappointing someone not only so innocent, but so impassioned, just because he can’t bring himself to be what she wants. What he should be. What is in everyone’s best interests for him to be, only human. With feelings, and emotions and the capability to love someone. 

Was he ever capable of loving someone? Before Pike? He can’t remember. Before he came west to begin with? Why is it that he can’t remember? 

He remembers heartbreak, knows that he is capable of feeling that much, but he never thought of that as a result of love. The word simply never arose in that time, if it did, he’s sure he would have laughed at it. Leila stands next to him for as long as he stands alone on the porch, thinking about useless things again, staring blankly at the distant horizon, the peppering of stars sprinkled close to the junction of sky and land. He doesn’t speak to her again. He is only thinking about stars. Maybe she’ll give he and Jim the horse, maybe not. He wonders for the first time, what if there is no horse to give? What if none of their horses is capable of riding such a distance, and they came here and blew through the house and knocked the paintings off the walls and the kerosene lamps on their sides for no reason at all? Not many things can make him laugh anymore, but this thought comes dangerously close. 

In his reverie, he doesn’t even notice Leila turning to him again, before her hand is on his arm, and he realizes she’s been asking him something, squeezing his sleeve gently to get his attention, then trailing down his wrist before he h can clench his hand and keep it away from hers.

“I’m going back to bed, alright?” 

She is too much. If she doesn’t have a horse to give them, he thinks he’ll give Jim Tango. And just run off into the desert, in the opposite direction. They are both too much for him, and they are all there is. If he ran far enough, could he disappear into the line of the horizon? Could he tip kerosene over his head, strike the matches he stole from Jim’s coat against it, run and run and jump, and would he look, from that distance, just like the white drip of one of the stars? Such a comforting anonymity would that be. 

"You know, this whole time you've been here, you haven't looked at me until just now. I mean really looked. You look my direction just enough that I think you're seeing me, but then you really do look at me, and I know it hasn't really happened until just now. And when it has, it isn’t some amazing epiphany or anything, it’s just that you pity me enough to throw me a bone.” 

“That isn’t my intention, really.” 

“I know it isn’t, I’m sorry. But you must understand how it comes across.” 

“I do.” 

If he were a horrible man, or at least visibly so, with blood on his hands, a price on his head, and the weight of a few more hearts on his chest, he thinks maybe then, she would be alright. If it turned out he wasn’t who she thought he was. He wishes there was someone to come up to her side, put their arm around her and say it all, how horrible he is, how undeserving of her heartache. 

☆

He's thinking about Number One. 

One of the unspoken comforts of his job for Pike was that half of his coworkers were nameless. Not in the dehumanizing, awkward way he was for so long, but casually unwanting, ambiguous. In the five years he spent working alongside Jim in the stables, he never graduated from being New Guy, and he didn't need to. When words are said often enough, they begin to stop sounding like words. Eventually they felt no longer synonymous with Fresh Meat, with Odd Man out, with Stranger. Eventually, he had a pseudo-identity that out of anyone's mouth, caused him to turn his head without further process. And it helped that he wasn’t alone, because half the people he came into correspondence with on a daily basis were nicknamed, even Jim was jokingly called Sir, Captain, no doubt a quip at his laughably commanding presence around the ranch. And then, there was Number One. 

Number One wasn’t like them, she had a name that suited her just fine, but everyone fell into the habit of referring to her as such, because Pike would call her nothing else. Even out of her presence, he took to doing so, which left one in the awkward position of stuttering in between her given name, and the preference, not sure if you had the privilege of calling her what leered close to a pet-name. 

Number One wasn’t a cowboy, or anything close to one. She lived in town, and she worked at a feed store where Pike bought all the grain that he and Jim would slosh into the feeding troughs of the horses each night, Jim trying to support the whole bag in his arms to impress Spock, red in the face, laughing by the end of it when he would wave him over to bring the bucket. That was all he knew about Number One. That, and she seemed to be damn good with numbers, according to Pike. And Spock didn’t like her. 

Every Saturday, Number One would drive an old, but very well-kept yellow pickup truck full of these grain bags tied with bungee cables up to the ranch, and then Pike would call the two of them out from the stables, where Jim would be sitting on his horse’s back, braiding dandelion into his mane, and Spock would be doing something that didn’t need doing, but still felt like work, and the two of them would come out and unload the grain. And Number One would stand with her arms folded in the open door, and watch them do it as her and Pike talked about something over a clipboard, and then she would smile, a tight-lipped, half-authentic sort of thing, and Pike would smile at her, and then she’d just get right back into her truck, and drive away with a half-hearted wave at the rest of them. 

There was no logical reason, of course, for him to dislike Number One, but he did. In all effects, she seemed to be a good person. There was nothing about her dislikeable. She didn’t say much, she did her job, and she left. She wasn’t a big part of their lives, but they saw her once a week, and Pike talked about her, and therefore she was in it just enough to be remembered. She was tall, not very tall, shorter than both he and Pike, but she felt tall, and she dressed like them, button-up shirts neatly tucked into her jeans, but regular boots, and her hair was always done, thick, sleek black hair that made her look like she belonged in a shampoo commercial much better than a dusty ranch in the middle of Texas, and always curled under, with Bettie Page bangs sitting lightly over her high forehead. 

Pike didn’t talk about her much. It was obvious, just in circumstance, that they were involved with one another, but he didn’t talk about her. Of course, he talked to Spock about her, but he talked to Spock about most things after a few beers, sitting on the kitchen counter with some television program droning in the background, on hot summer nights when they’d open the front door and feel the blackness of the night seeping in. Then he’d tell him that Number One does more than just bring the horse feed, he tries to keep it down when they discuss it, but she’s been doing his accounting for years. He never knew how to crunch numbers, and doing business with her all this time led her onto that fast. And she never asked for any money in return, but she just picked it up, and she can do it so fast, even map out everyone’s salaries. Some teacher in grade school called it dyscalcula, but he always suspected that was just a big word for stupid. And Spock would say something that he would never sober, like I don’t think you’re stupid, and he’d just keep talking about Number One, and how he would never have the ranch still on its feet if it weren’t for her, and that’s why he’d never try to start something between them, afraid that he’d piss her off and she’d start bullshitting all the numbers and run him into the ground. She probably wouldn’t do that, and he’s probably just making excuses, but it’s a chance he’s not willing to take. 

It wasn’t any consolation. Maybe it should've been, but it wasn’t. And thinking about it now, he thinks he can really empathize with Leila, and her heartbreak, which was so wonderfully different, and yet seems so similar to his own. He remembers the days where he’d think about it and wonder if it was a problem with him, or if it was just bad luck. After so long, you start to think there’s a little too much bad luck being thrown around for it not to have at least something to do with the person you are. Jim used to say that to him. And then Jim would wander into the stable in the morning, find him bent over the locks on the stable doors - they always stayed vigilant for nonexistent horse thieves in the night - and then he would his throat, and Spock would throw him a glance in acknowledgement, and keep rattling the key in all the locks, and watch Jim out of the corner of his eye move to open the doors to the pasture, and then stop. 

“What do you do every night?” 

“Excuse me?” He looks at him with that wide-eyed, lip-biting expression that is infallibly charming no matter what’s coming out of his mouth. 

Well, I know you don’t just go to bed every time you clock in. You hardly get here before I do in the mornings, and I can tell you just woke up. I’m just wondering how you spend your free time.” 

“I don’t know, I guess. I read. I read a lot of books.” 

“So do I.” Smiling like he’s casing him out for a schoolyard friend. “But you don’t spend hours at it, do you?” 

“Well, me and Pike usually...talk. I mean at night, we sit in the living room and talk.” 

“What’s he talk about?” 

At this point, he is through with the stables, drops the key in his coat pocket and turns to Jim, arms folded. He isn’t sure what he’s getting at, not yet, but he has a rough idea, and would rather redirect the question than answer it in full. 

“Not you.” 

“Well, I sure don’t believe that. But really.” 

“A lot of things. He’s an interesting man.” 

He scoffs, just loud enough to hear, and then starts to beckon the horses out of their stables, losing sight of Spock behind them in the process. 

“Why are you interrogating me?” He calls to Jim over their unassuming backs. “What do you think he's saying about you that’s so important?” 

“Hey, easy. I’m just being nosy. And I’m a little curious how a smart, book-reading man such as yourself manages to find so much intrigue in a guy so full of horseshit.” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

“Well, I don’t want to offend you. If you like him, that’s no business of mine.” 

“No, tell me what you mean. I’m a little curious how you can have so much issue when a man who’s given you a job and constantly turns the other cheek to your slacking at it.” 

With the horses out of their way, just a long stretch of dirt and trampled hay between them, he clenches his hands and thinks for the first time in his life that his hand would feel right with a gun in it. In the year since they began to work with one another, they have never fought. Never anything beyond lighthearted, snipping comments to one another as they worked. 

“Pike’s a great man. I mean that. I owe him a lot, really. And I don’t take that for granted, but I’m not going to glorify him. And I can’t stand seeing other good men glorify him, is all, when I know it all goes over his head.” 

“When what goes over his head?” 

“I just means that he’s a very smart guy. And he reads men very well, and he still won’t give two shits what someone’s willing to go through for his benefit, cause he’ll never offer up anything in return for anyone’s trouble. He’s entirely self-absorbed.” 

“Are you talking about Number One?” 

“I’m talking about you, Spock.” 

Jim’s looking at him now without any of the coy pretense, without any of his usual playfulness that made the conversation feel so gentle before. So bearable. Now, he has half a mind to whip the pitchfork off the wall behind him and snap it forward against his skull, send him into that incomprehensible haze that would shut Jim up. 

“I’m sorry, but I just...I’ve seen you. And I can’t keep watching you...Watching you bend over backwards for him when I know he’ll just stand there and let you." 

"I do not bend over backwards for him." 

"Or forwards." 

“Jim.” 

His mouth is dry. He still can’t wrap his head around why Jim has to point it out to him, but like telepathy, he’s already piping up again, with the ready answer. 

"I’m sorry, I mean it, listen, I see how you act. I know you cut your hair like that for a reason. But I just can’t stand it. I’d hope that if you saw it happening to me, without realizin’, you’d do the same. It just feels wrong. When I’ve known him long enough to know what he’s like.” 

He has to raise a hand to his hair, try and push it away. Was it so obvious that he had cut it one Saturday night in the bathroom with kitchen scissors, wishing it was long enough to curl, knowing he wouldn’t do that even if it was, would not be so overt. Wishing he had never let it get so sun-bleached, that it was still as dark as hers. Crying as he did it, despite himself, and having to clamp one hand over his mouth just to silence it, staring into the drain of the sink until the pressure in his head is bursting, considering leaving it, just to see how long he can. 

Jim’s looking at his shoes. By the guilty look in his eyes, he knows they are far past that realization about one another, and miles past it when it came to themselves. He doesn’t remember how long they stand, nervously avoiding another’s gaze, until he swallows, tries to bring his head up, and walks forward, skirting as far around Jim as he possibly can to get out the door. In the doorway, halfway out of the dim light, Jim turns again, his mouth open, and he goes still. 

“Spock.” 

“What?” 

“I mean I know it seems...too obvious.” 

Jim never finishes his thought - he doesn't need to. For days he seems to perpetually stand across the stable floor, keeping his head down, watching Spock through lowered glances like a nervous rabbit as if waiting for some sign that he's forgotten the whole affair. 

He doesn't, of course. The memory of it burns bright on his eyelids, makes him stiff, half-blind. Even looking at Pike begins to feel like a crime. He notices, too, becomes softer towards him for a moment, his glances lingering where Jim's have ceased to. He resents Jim for that, too. For making him self-aware. Before, he had been so thoughtless, so childlike. He festers like the bud of a cigarette for a week, tensing his jaw around the two of them, hardly crossing paths with Pike in the evenings, going straight to his room or driving all the way into town just to turn around again, just to feel the distance pass under him. He thinks about it a million times, rehearses it with himself, writes it down. 

He blows into the stables one night as Jim is packing himself up to go, in the hazy, purple dusk filled with trembling drafts, in the lull of a winter night some time in December. Jim looks up at him, in the process of lighting his cigarette, like a disobedient schoolboy. 

"Take a ride with me." 

"What?" 

"Get your horse and take a ride with me." 

The trap is already set, and like before, he feels them both ensnared for a moment in that stillness, that lapse in time that is only broken by the slow curl of smoke around Jim's hands and the huff from one of the stables at his back. 

"Alright." 

The days when Pike would take him riding, carefully introducing him to Tango and leading him along with a constant look over his shoulder have faded months ago. When he told him he could take Tango out whenever he wanted, once he feels ready, and he had thought for sure he never would, if not out of a lack of confidence, but out of the strange trust that was implied by such an offer. Nothing like the house they shared, the drinks and the laundry baskets, this was a living creature, one close to his heart, one that had carried Pike on her back right where Spock now sits, a hand flat against her neck, one who had supported him in a more intimate way than Spock could ever hope to. And maybe it is counteractive to take her out now, with Jim, but he presses that thought down under his heel, and lets Jim lead them out of the barn doors and into the night. 

"I came on too strong." 

Five or six feet away, he's leaning down to grind his cigarette out on his heel, slipping the butt of it into his back pocket. He's looking straight ahead, they've only been sitting on their horses' backs, allowing them to wander across the open field in a general direction, and now he sits up straight, gazing off into the trees as if they spell out his lines for him. 

"I think I just...had it in my mind that I could help you get over him. I know how selfish that sounds. That I took it as an opportunity, at first." 

"You were right. I was under the impression I wasn't acting noticeably." 

"You weren't." It's a serious reassurance. "I mean it, I just pay too much attention. I had motivation to look out for it, you know. It isn't noticeable. Not that there would be anything wrong if it was." 

"I don't know that I agree with that." 

Jim doesn't answer that. They wander into the stretch of trees on the far side of the field, just enough to reach the creek tucked away behind a rocky cliffside, a long, skinny stretch of clear water that Jim leads his horse straight up to drink from, looking over his shoulder to see him approach. 

"I would, you know. At least try to help you. I won't claim not to have other motivations, of course." 

In the creek, a reflection shines clean up into the trees above, and the pinpricks of stars that confuse themselves among the froth of the water. 

"We could see Sagittarius right now." 

"What?" 

"The constellation. We should be able to see it. It's a clear night. And the proper season." 

"You drive me fucking crazy." 

He doesn't disacknowledge what Jim has said, of course. He hears it very clearly, even though Jim rolls his eyes clear up to the stars when he changes the subject. He just doesn't have anything to say in response. And he is right about Sagittarius, anyways. 

Jim does help. And the fact of his ulterior motivations only prove more helpful, because in weeks Spock is carefully turning away from Pike, though he feels there will always be inside him a man who will continue to bend for him, and towards a very uncertain, irregular, and wonderful camaraderie that fulfills and then overcomes his daydreams of Pike before he knows it. 

He could never recount it, the series of secret conjunctions and mergings that occur over the next four years, whenever and wherever they can be managed: the stables, the creek, Spock's bedroom - Jim never takes him into his own, knowing there would be too much risk with the other ranch hands that share the building - behind Pike's truck one night on a ridiculously symbolic, slightly drunken whim. He would never be able to recount it, beyond tiny vignettes that left a significant impact, and the general feeling of weightlessness and speed, like they are suddenly moving faster than the world and the people around them. 

It was stupid. It was reckless, and thoughtless, and the culmination of a decade spent in celibacy, which meant that it was even stupider than it could have been. They never really have sex, not formally - neither of them have the guts, Jim would say, but it doesn't matter, it's all more than enough. 

For a long time, it's all more than enough. 

So now Jim is Number One. And he is Pike, like maybe he always wanted to be, deep down. And Leila is him. And Leila needs a Jim, which he would gladly have offered in return for the horse, had he a spare, but he barely has his own Jim, anymore. So instead he stands stiffly by the fence, his pack on his shoulders, and waits as she talks to Jim about the horse, all smiles as she squeezes his hands tight around the reins, modestly accepting the folded couple of bills he slips into her hand before placing his foot into the stirrup and swinging himself abroad the new steed with a grace that instantly erases the memory of him trying to free-climb over Tango’s back. In that instant, he’s a cowboy again, the man he was all those years ago on the ranch, returned to his proper stature at last. He looks down at Leila, says something more, and for a single moment, she doesn’t look at Jim or the horse, but directly at Spock, as she responds. 

It is a haunting look, bare, really, truly bare. But not tender-bare, a look that cuts to the bone, and keeps going straight through. A look that says this horse is for him, but it is the last gift of hers, after the sweetness, the money, the ceiling, it is heartbreakingly fitting for the final item to be a horse. A creature to carry him away from her, for good. He was sending telepathies to her, asking her to change, to pick her smaller self up and store her away, and she had picked up his smaller self, and dropped him on the floor, and dropped rocks on him, and kicked him under the front porch. 

And her look goes so completely through, that it doesn’t leave a doubt in his mind she knows he understands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that was 11k I know and I am sorry :(


	4. Denmates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for light consumption of alcohol, some raunchiness in the second half. idk if anyone is reading this. thanks for those kudos earlier though big love

For the first day, from the time they take off along Jim’s careful path that afternoon, to the hazy awakening against Tango’s back the following evening, he doesn’t speak to Jim. He lies awake through the night, watching him folded up on the ground, his coat shoved up behind his head as a pillow, and thinks about the night in the motel in Leupp. How they instinctively wound together like denmates in that dark, cold place. If he tries to sleep in all this empty dark now, he'll just get to thinking about the stables again. Blood-painted stables, and tying someone to a bed by the legs, and the whiplash crack of his spine under the heel of a boot. Nonsensical, over-dramatic readings of old memories, but still ones that have haunted him ever since he set out to look for Jim.

He can feel the pressure in the small of his back, even now, pressing there, a constant twinge just under his skin. He had been riding in a field, just like this one, the field behind the ranch, when his spine had cracked, when he had been crushed open, when his blood had been spilled across the dirt. He had been riding just like this. 

He snaps awake with the side of his face stuck to Tango’s mane, his skin on fire, his shirt stuck to his chest. Bolting upright, he reaches beside him, reaches for a body, anyone’s and finds open air, only he and Tango, carrying him ever constantly forward. 

The second creature at his side makes him jump when they slide into his vision, a near mirror image of his own, and he has to blink, remind himself it’s Jim before he makes himself look too crazy. 

“Are you alright?” 

“Quite.” 

“I don’t know how you can do that. How you can trust her like that. Did you sleep last night at all?” 

“I’m alright.” 

“You look like you saw a ghost.” 

“Sleeping in motion gives me weird dreams.” It’s a flat-out lie, but Jim lets it go. He steers a bit closer, already back to a natural at riding, leans in and points to the left, where the high signs and dark smattering of buildings alludes to a sizeable town, not quite a city, clustered around the highway. 

“I checked the map earlier, that should be a town called Valentine. I was gonna wake you when we got a little closer and try and stop there, replenish our supplies, give the horses a rest, maybe get something to eat.” He makes a point of leaving the question of food for last, but Spock knows him better than that. He knows the story of him and his father getting stuck in that mine shaft when he was a teenager. How starvation is, and probably always will be his biggest fear.

“Are you sure that’s practical?” 

“Yeah, sure. Khan won’t ever expect me to stop in the middle of the day in such a big town. If he’s even still tailin’ us, I wouldn’t be surprised if the bastard is still circling around back in Winslow.”

“You shouldn’t underestimate a man who’s chasin’ you with a motorcycle gang.” 

“I’m not! I just want a real cup of coffee again.”

Spock doesn’t have the heart to ask if it’s worth all the risk, even just to be seen in public - the two of them, with their horses and in their strange, tousled states, aren’t exactly inconspicuous, and Jim seems to be planning a lengthier stay than just swinging in for some provisions. But Jim has changed just since getting on the back of his own horse again, and it occurs to Spock that he no longer feels phantomlike, and that finally they have reunited with each other. If he were just to erase the few days that they spent disjointed, in between the scene on the fire escape - which feels like years ago, now - and the acquisition of a second horse, he could accept that his once dreamed after, idealistic scene where they would notice each other again, and be drawn beautifully back into each other's orbit happened in too much of a haze to remember clearly. But even that hardly matters anymore, because before Spock had time to realize, they were back to themselves again, spinning just a beat faster than the rest of the world, perfectly in tune despite Spock’s silence for the first day. 

Before he’s realized Jim has come so close, he jumps at the sudden feeling of his thumb across his cheek, and bats his hand away as Jim laughs at him. 

“You need to shave. I can’t handle you as a bear.” 

“I haven’t had the chance, you know that. We ride all day, there isn’t enough sunlight.”

“We should stop in a motel sometime soon. Have real showers. Get rid of that.”

“You remember that you gave about 90% of our money away for the horse. Furthermore, I don't appreciate your insulting me when I was the reason you escaped from Khan back in Winslow. Twice.” 

“Doesn’t mean we don’t have enough for one night.” 

“You weren’t always such a man of decadence.” 

“Wrong. I always was. I just never had the faculties to indulge myself. Since when is a Motel 6 decadent?” 

“In our circumstances, it is.” 

Luckily for Jim, they’re just riding into town when he begins to sputter out a nonexistent retort, and he immediately scouts out the seediest little dive bar on the street and all but pulls Spock by the hair in its direction. 

“I think we can reach my hideout by the end of next week.” Jim pokes at a nonexistent dot just under the first ‘a’ in San Francisco with his fork, then makes awkward work of turning the map towards Spock on their little chrome top table tucked against the corner of the bar, and prods at more spots on the map along his pen line. 

"We're in Valentine. So I think we can make it to the border of Nevada tonight, stop, head west in the morning, and we can reach Death Valley, hopefully, tomorrow night. Sound good?"

The room is claustrophobic, dark, sandwiched between other businesses and windowless, the only out the front door past the crowded bar, and Spock made sure to take the seat that puts his back against the wall, where he can look over Jim’s shoulder at every newcomer that rings the front bell - though he doesn’t have any real plan in the event that Khan, or any of his men were to saunter through. He remembers the last time he’s been in a public place at all was three days before meeting Jim, and he’s sure Jim’s right about the state of his face. 

“You’re not listening. Are you sure you’re ok?” 

“I’m just watching the door.” 

“You act like I don’t know you better than that.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

Jim looks up at him, only for a moment, then looks back down at the map in silence, turning it back his way to analyze something on his own, then takes out his wallet and counts the bills inside, folds the map. Under the table, the toe of his boot bumps against Spock’s, but stays where it is, and he gets lost thinking about it, wondering if it’s some expression of comfort, or an attempt to telepathize something between them, on the tiniest level.

“I’m sorry about Leila.” The sudden admission makes him glad he didn’t eat, because the old familiar knot that he expected to be gone for good after their departure pulls tight once again in the back of his throat, and makes him forget all about their boots touching or even Khan showing up. Jim is speaking very quietly, looking straight at him across the table, both his elbows up in front of him as if to shield their conversation from the rest of the room. “I mean pushin’ you about it. I forgot you weren’t...you know, like me about that stuff. I guess that makes you a lot more respectable than me, really. But I’m really thankful to you for getting it out of her, however you ended up doing it.” 

“All I did was talk to her.” 

"Wow." He drops his fork, leans back in his chair to scrutinize him. Spock knows he finds it impressive, doesn't have the will to brush it off. "You never told me your history; you know. It's obvious something happened, you could just tell, how you look at each other like wild animals or something." 

Of course, he remembers his promise to Jim when they were in the stable with Tango, to tell him all about it when they were through. He didn’t say it was a promise, of course, but he still feels the obligation. So, he tries to fill himself with air, sucking in a long breath through his nose and looking away from the hypnotic pull of the front door. 

“I was 20.” 

“Good start to a romance.” He can hear Jim whisper, and before he thinks to let it go, he kicks him under the table, just enough to make him shut up with a smile. 

“It was after I left California.” Their friendship is knowing enough that he trusts Jim to understand what he means by this. “And I thought I’d head northeast, I don’t know why. I didn’t stop in Leupp when I went through the first time, and I hit it just around nightfall, so I spent the night there, and she...found me sleeping in my car, that next morning, knocked on my window, made a big fuss about it, you know. I thought it was some kind of maternal fantasy at first, how she pulled me along and convinced me to stay with her, fed me, gave me money, tried to set me straight. I think she thought I was a criminal, honestly, and she was turnin’ me towards the light, I don’t know. Basically, I got up to leave one day, you know, I’ve overstayed my welcome, I’ll try and find a way to repay you someday, thank you for your hospitality, and she wouldn’t hear it. Just started crying, clinging to me, like she had it in her mind I would live with her forever. You know Elias is just a friend of her mother’s, both her parents died when she was in school, she never told me what from. But she really imprinted onto me, I mean we were both barely grown-up, and I didn’t handle it well. I left one night and gave her some dramatic spiel about finding my way back someday, because I was so mean, and so young. And drove off, and I hadn’t seen her since.” 

“And you’d really just let us waltz right past without sayin’ anything to her?” 

“Yes."

For a while, the chattering at the bar and the clink of glasses behind it is stifled, everything seeming dead silent in the room despite the open mouths and the constant motion. Like he’s watching it all through a mute television, like he was after his concussion, when most sound offended him when it wasn’t from Pike. He looks just over Jim’s shoulder for a while, at the red line of his shirt, and is thankful at least that he doesn’t press him with any more questions about it. It’s excruciating to have someone know about it. To be known - or for the smaller version of himself that he kept nested inside for so long to be known. He doesn’t take well to knowing, never has. 

“What did you talk about?” 

“I told her the truth. That some horse thief is at our tails for you chasing him off. That’s all we ever needed to do, really.” 

At first, he thinks he imagines how Jim’s stance changes when he says that, and then thinks it could be embarrassment at dragging out the affair longer and harder than it ever needed to be. But it’s another questionable benefit of their history - he wonders, for a moment, if they look at each other like animals too, on either side of their greasy chrome tabletop in the back of this bar - he knows that it does change, and it isn’t from embarrassment, but from guilt. A guilt he doesn’t understand, and doesn’t quite have the courage yet to ask after, but carries in him as they pick themselves up and leave, as he watches Jim put the money down on the counter with his cheerful gratitude that is itself poisoned by this guilt, this guilt that tinges every motion and word as they wander through the town into the evening, looking for something to feed the horses, looking for new water, new matches. Jim gives him a single free glance over the low aisles of a gas station, as he’s scanning the shelves for a new tub of Vaseline - the further north they travel, the windier it gets, and his lips are paper-dry. He thinks Jim notices. Notices Spock noticing him glancing at them. And he thinks he notices him palming this tub of Vaseline, except then he lifts a dark bottle in his hand just enough for Spock to see what it is, and raises his eyebrows, to which he raises a careful one, and then Jim smiles, and turns around, towards the counter, laying down their ragtag haul of provisions without another word. He picks at a nail, stiff-jawed and serious as he pays the redheaded girl at the counter, something guilty in his presence, though Spock is sure he didn’t pocket anything.

It’s dark when they set out again, he’s thankful Jim didn’t want to stay the night in a motel anyways, knows deep down he would much rather do so some day when he knows he’ll sleep. Whether or not the day ever comes. Maybe he prefers it, sleeping on horseback, and it is true that the two nights he’s slept in a bed during the past week have been the most fitful. Has he always been this way? 

From the day he set out with Tango, with a mission in his head and the weight of bone on his shoulders, shaken, but resolute, he realized that she was, somehow, the closest creature to his heart. Theirs had been a connection unlike any he had known, born not out of attraction, or need, but pure trauma. Which was different, so different. They had been together that day on the ranch, had ridden up to the corral and witnessed it in the same moment, and it was only natural that they departed together. Jim will never know the experience like the two of them did, doesn’t have the image burned forever into some secret vault of his mind - however deep it had surely affected him otherwise. 

And maybe there is something in it about humanhood, about the straightforwardness of connecting to another sort of creature. He is much past the pretense of measuring his humanity up against everyone else's, gave up on such futile ways around the same time he left the ranch. 

Who said he didn’t have the capability of changing himself? He has come a long way from the self-violence of cutting himself down to size, his childhood fears of ostracization and objectification in the same breath. On instinct, he raises his fingers to his right ear, cupping the point of it and the awkward seam at the bottom at once, remembering the origin of that cut, the name of humanity that goes sour when mentioned in association with himself, his self-identity. 

From the time he was old enough to recognize it, he didn’t like his ear. He thought about it like Frankenstein, like the scientist who had grafted his awkward, thin parts together in the dark had reached into the wrong bin in his fervor and connected him with a bat’s ear on one side. He had always sort of known it could be fixed, could have been surgically repaired when he was a baby. His parents wouldn’t spend the money, of course, on a cosmetic like that, and then for a while he held this festering, unspoken belief that his father was grateful for it, that he found some sadistic satisfaction in this physical manifestation of his son who was a changeling, some visible proof that he came out all wrong, or from something wrong. In retrospect, he may or may not have been incorrect in his suspicion, but Spock - or the nameless, smallest little nester in him, solid and wooden - had believed it fervently, and it had awoken in him at around ten years old, an age when no one should be finding such solutions to their problems, a controlled, logical violence like a honeybee, hovering and waiting to perform the strike that would end its life.

Eventually, in his adult life, he stubbornly came to accept it as a reminder of his otherness, and learned to turn his face to every brief encounter in such a way to conceal it to the uncareful witness. When he met Jim, he had just reached the point where this came like a second sense, when his eyes no longer sprang to its reflection in every mirror. He had just ceased to obsess over it like a Cyrano, when Jim had looked up at him in the golden light of the stables and taken hold of it - he can still feel the soft pad of his finger sliding underneath the point. And then he had said the thing about Spock, again, equating him to otherness, extraterrestriality, but this time not in sombre acceptance of that fact, but mindless humor, and light affection. 

And that was it. In that one sentence, he seemed to have exhumed and burned a lifetime of war against the inhumanity of him. In that one sentence, the Spock creature is now coming to firmly believe that he did not exist prior to that moment, prior to Jim and to the ranch and prior to Texas, and he understands half of the madness of Vincent Van Gogh, nearly wants to rip it off as he did in his childhood, and press it into his hands, a gift of flesh offered in the only way he has the guts to. There is hardly even time to think about his coronation. 

☆

They stop for the night at the edge right on Lake Mohave, at the border, like Jim said, Jim gracefully landing on the ground in front of him, tying his reins to a firm, protruding rock face and setting about kicking the brush around to clear a space for their camp before Spock even thinks of dismounting. There is no imagining what time it is, or how long they've been travelling, just Jim setting up camp and allowing him time to follow, to reorient himself. Despite the meagre amount he managed to eat at the bar, he finds he isn't hungry when Jim asks, and sets about feeding the horses as he listens to branches snapping and being bundled together into a crackling fire with such swiftness that reminds him of Jim's annoying boy scout capabilities.

The last crumbs of the sugar cubes are being snuffled from his hand when Jim comes up at his side, the open whiskey bottle in his hand, looking into his horse's face, then running a hand down her sleek, dark nose as if trying to orient them two, like with his horse before. With all his cavalier flair he regained when he got back in the saddle again, there is still something out of place with how he runs his nails up across her face, something nostalgic, and sad as he takes another long drink from the bottle. 

"I don't like that we haven't seen Khan in so long." 

"That's a strange thing to get sad about. The man who's trying to shoot out my kneecaps?" 

"We have no idea where he is, is all. He could be right beside us, or miles behind. I think he's smart enough to have realized we're on horseback by now." 

"Maybe you're right." 

Jim pauses, still idly stroking the nameless horse’s forehead, staring at her so blankly Spock thinks it should be off-putting, but she just stares right back, quietly accepting of his strange demeanor. Then he turns, as if sprung into motion, looks back at the fire, and around their lazy campsite as if suddenly aware of long-haired men lurking in the shadows there, of Khan waiting with his gun sighted, and then back at Spock. He can feel Jim’s eyes on him, travelling down, lingering on his jaw for a noticeable moment longer than the rest, then he presses his whiskey-wielding hand into his sternum, a Jim-like, smiling challenge in his eyes once again.

“Catch up with me.” 

“Don’t you think it’s not the best idea to be inebriated in the event Khan does show up?” 

“That won’t happen. I know Khan too well, he won’t want to ambush under the cover of night. He wants to see the light drain from my eyes in technicolor. It’ll happen in the middle of the day, if it does.” 

He takes the bottle after all, sliding his hand up under Jim’s for a long, thrilling moment, and takes a modest sip - though it’s room temperature, tastes rather like hellfire - and tries to ignore how deeply Jim seems to have thought his death through. Khan has that sort of effect, he supposes. It wasn’t macabre. Just realistic. 

"I went down to the lake when I was out gettin' firewood. Before we go, we should take the horses to drink. I was thinking about taking a dip back there at some point, too." 

"It's so cold." He attempts to pass the bottle back to Jim, but he holds up his hand flat and pushes it back. 

"You should come with me.” He reaches out and taps his nail against the glass. “It won’t be too cold. And that’ll warm you up.” 

“You think that Khan will have any reservations about cutting you down with pneumonia?” 

“I think that you’re being a stick in the mud.” 

“I think I’m being your voice of reason. I don't see what telling the truth has to do with sticks.” 

The air is cold enough that he can see Jim’s sigh of annoyance, and recognizes that tight-lipped, defeated expression from their ranch days, when he simply gave up arguing with him over whatever useless thing they disagreed upon. And then it didn’t matter that they were so different, and disagreed so often as a result, because it was such fun to do so, and to win, on top of it. 

He is glad he has the whiskey to blame it on. When Jim takes his arm, just over his elbow, and pulls him just enough to get his attention, something in his throat leaves, a length of rope he’s forgotten, and a certain weightlessness takes him over as he’s led, still protesting, Jim still brushing each one off with a smile. The Colorado is wide, much wider than the creek they frequented back at the ranch, and rushes steadily, not quickly enough to be dangerous, through the brush like a long, clear cut in the night that widens into the lake several feet away. 

By the time he tears his eyes away from the spectacle, Jim’s got his shirt over his head, turned away from him so the full stretch of his back, as soft and muscular as it was three years ago, and he feels if he put out his hand against the small of it, he would feel warm.

“Are you really still worried about Khan?” The question breaks him out of his stupor, but before he can compose himself enough to answer, Jim’s hands are at the front of his jeans, and he can feel his own hands shake, can feel himself descending into a long forgotten feverishness, an intense, hot, sticky sickness for which the only remedy is him. 

“No, no, I’m not worried.” He must repress it, the wild, animal feeling that has been sleeping since Jim left the ranch all that time ago, must not be so upfront to him. Absolutely must not enter the river with him. 

So he stands on the shore, like a aquaphobe, made to watch him below in the water, curling himself up under the surface so only the soft planes of his shoulders are visible above the surface line, then bending back, hands over his face and wet hair, sending a spiral of droplets up over his head. He scrubs both hands over his face, coming up with red cheeks, a wild look in his eyes as he blinks away the trickle of water around his eyes and reorients himself to look back at Spock. 

“I can’t imagine how you are standing that.” He laughs, like always, shaking his head and sending another radial spray out around his shoulders. 

“It’s not bad, really, once you’re all in. Takes a second of getting used to, that’s all. Come on in.”

“I’ll pass.” It truly is the cold that makes him reluctant, the rest of it only adding to his conviction. But it isn’t good enough for Jim, never is, because after a few long, quiet seconds of them looking at each other from land and sea, he rolls his shoulders, turns and pulls himself from the water, with the moonlight hitting him all over, every single surface of his body silver and cold. “I mean it.” Spock deadpans, but it isn’t enough, isn’t even audible, he doesn’t think, because he’s led to the very edge, just inches from crossing into that frightening, untrackable territory, and Jim’s hands are up at his neck and his own hands go limp, trembling and incapable, as his fingers work slowly down the center of his chest, taking gentle time at each button, staining the fabric dark and cold where it falls back against his skin. Before Jim can touch it, he pulls the bandana over his chin, over his nose, a desperate attempt at retaining at least the warmth in his face.

“I promise it isn’t cold.” 

“Jim, I can tell it’s cold.” 

“You’re so nervous.” 

This time, Jim wins the argument in a moment. They’re even again. It hardly occurs to him that Jim’s hands are at his waist.

He doesn’t push Jim’s hands away, and he doesn’t tell him no anymore, and he doesn’t stay out of the river. For a moment, he doesn’t do anything, allows himself to simply exist, and the water is cold, despite what Jim said to him, and he finds himself shivering, shaking like a featherless baby bird, the night air raking back across his neck, his spine, but then hands are on him, steady on his waist, and pulling him along, deeper into the water until it glides around his elbows and he realizes that it does take getting used to, and then the cold, wet hands are sliding up his ribs, up his neck once again and over his ears, soaking his hair, threading their fingers through the sides of it, on the top of his head with Jim’s elbows firm on his shoulders, bringing their faces so near to one another. He hasn’t been so close - not in all the time they have been together again. Not even in the motel, when they slept back to chest, not looking, not daring to look. 

“Why do you think you’re so nervous?” 

“You know.” 

“We used to do this all the time. I mean, all the time. You remember those nights? I mean it was the easiest place to go, that’s where I -” 

“Yes. I do.” Of course, he does, it’s nearly an insult to assume he might not, after everything. And if not for the time they spent, the actual actions they took, he remembers it for the reckless, nearly childish, fearlessness they possessed in that time. One could call it many things. Courage, naivety, carelessness. Ferality. That was appropriate, ferality. Until, of course, Jim got restless. Until he started to take on the appearance of pacing a long cage, riding out to the edges of the property, taking long drives on his days off, disappearing for hours at a time, no explanation. A look of grief in his eyes, a look of decay. 

Spock always knew it was coming. It was another thing he never talked to Jim about - aside from their ridiculous, half-baked plan to set off together one day, tour America, live on the road without having to look out for Pike or anyone else to stumble across them in the dark. To be truly free.

He knows freeness. Has taken it in small, measured doses ever since his youth. Freeness was in the road. And it was in the land. Freeness was in the creek, in the wild feeling of being pinned to a bed, which incited the illusion of entrapment, being ensnared, but having the free will to allow it. There is a whole paradox around it, he and Jim's love, which was a choice of free will, a choice to be bound to his side, to give up a part of himself to disappear into his image. Neither of them can abandon the other, which is ensnarement. But to abandon - for Jim to abandon him (and by default, he abandon Jim by not following him) - and to regain freedom from the other, set into effect an emotional entrapment, as if Jim had twisted him open the night before, in his sleep, carefully removed the layer of him that was devotedly his, and closed him back up. Sp a part of him would be with Jim, and without it he was loose, rattling, the part of him from before Jim and the new part from now knocking together whenever he moved around.

Of course, he always could have followed him, definitely had half a mind to, but when it came down to it something dormant, and sinister clamped his feet to the dirt and held him still. Something otherworldly that commanded he stay, commanded him to be present on that day, if Jim couldn't be. 

Their love for each other was a transient thing, at any rate. It drifted, just like them, across their state lines without warning or direction, so sometimes he would look at Jim and feel that it was all something made up, some neuronal impulse, and sometimes he would look at him and feel like he was being strung up by the feet and gutted with a knife. 

"Earth to Spock." Fingers tapping against the side of his head. "Come in. Earth to Spock." 

"Spock here." 

"Where did you go?" His face is wet from being touched, his fingers travelling all over it like a blind man, like a mapper. He doesn't think he should be the one answering that question. He's touching his ear again, in the idle way he once would, mindlessly running his thumb and forefinger against the tip, his other fingers around the shell, touching upon the split. In all their time, he's never told Jim about that, and yet, he touches it so tenderly Spock can't help wondering if he knows it, somehow. It wouldn't shock him, if he did. He felt it integral to his person, that heaviest part of himself, the wooden child inside him with the straight razor in one small hand, shaking as he stood at the bathroom sink and imagined himself big enough to go through with it.

It's a wonder he can think about these things as Jim is touching him, his hands going underneath the water to slide down his forearms, wrap around his chest, pull him closer than he already is. He can't feel his legs, anymore, almost nothing from his thighs down, almost floating. He can still feel the path of his hands, down his back, disappearing, then at the backs of his thighs, fingers splayed across his skin, digging in as if with claws. 

They are so close already that Spock doesn't realize, until their noses touch, that they've drawn even closer, and that Jim still looks him in the eye, and he can nearly see his own in his blown-out pupil for a split second before his thumb and forefinger take the corners of his bandana and pull it down off his mouth, and their lips are touching, and the freezing water beneath him disappears, the forest disappears, the cold itself disappears and realizes that Jim Kirk has just kissed him, that he is still kissing him, and holding them close together like the current could wash him away. It doesn’t matter that it’s been three years since he last kissed him, or that he hasn’t kissed a single soul in all that time - and Jim surely has - because right now there isn’t anyone else, no faceless lovers he’s made since leaving, no Leila, no Christopher Pike, and definitely no Khan. Just the horses, and Jim, and Spock, and the Spock inside of him and the other Spock inside of that one all the way down to that precocial child with the straight razor, who has no earthly idea what is going on outside, but isn’t so volatile as usual, just standing, just waiting, like he can feel the wooden room around him quaking, and waits for it to subside.

It’s a very human ritual, the path of their hands against one another, and the mindless, almost pornographic hunger of their mouths, like they are trying to consume one another. Is he really so repressed? He enjoys it, that much is sure, but he overthinks it in the same breath, he psychoanalyzes, and if there were a way to turn off his thoughts like he turns off the sensations of the world around him that aren’t Jim, to reconstruct the two of them in star-pointillation, in a dark stretch with no world, no history, no psychology, he would do it.

The hunger turns to tenderness, turns to the bestial satisfaction of tasting Jim in his own mouth even when he pulls away, with his hair dark and slicked around over his forehead, like he took something out of him, tucked it behind his teeth. 

"Earth to Spock." 

"I'm sorry." 

"No, don't be. What do you have to be sorry for?" 

It is a touching thought, but he can’t take Jim very seriously with his nose red, his lips shining with river water and spit, the unassuming sexuality of him as he looks wide-eyed and sympathetic at Spock. He shakes his head, he looks down into the water. Jim’s hands are settled above his hips, where his fingers rub and dig into his skin like a kneading cat, like he’s trying to gather him up in his fists. 

“I'm not cold anymore.” 

“I told you you’d get used to it.” 

“N-no, actually, I think this is a sign of early hypothermia.” 

Jim’s right hand drops from his hip, and Spock realizes there is feeling there yet, shivers, ironically enough, and the resulting smile from Jim is one of sadistic, childish glee, like he’s dipped Spock’s pigtail in an inkwell. 

That is what he blames on the whiskey, when they pull each other from the water and their legs don’t move, dragging themselves, trembling back to the ashes of the forgotten fire. Paralyzed, half-dead, they both forget the euphoria of their recovered affections, fervently rekindling the fire, almost climbing inside it, still wet and stuck to their clothes they climbed into too quickly, Spock tucked underneath Jim, between his legs as they sit and stare into the fire, red and wet and huddled together like rats. Jim’s head on his shoulder. His face pressed into Spock’s neck, his steady, warm breath on his cold skin. 

☆

The rest of their way to San Francisco is gentle, every stretch of grass in a golden haze, every mountain with a look of silver. Even the sky seems softer to him. When they ride out in the morning, tightly bundled in their coats, stuffy-nosed, avoiding each other's gazes like guilty teenagers, he thinks it's sickness, karma for their naive exploits of the previous night. And when Khan finds them, gets Jim in his sights, will they be able to run? The anxiety creeps up despite all of Jim's reassurances, until he can feel his legs buckling against Tango’s sides, hear the snap cleaving him almost in two, the bullet whizzing through the air, the blood across the ground they canter steadily over, trailing backwards as their horses continued on without them. He can see Khan’s face in every window.

Yet, every time he looks at Jim, it disappears. It’s a ridiculously romantic concept, but it is somehow very true. Every time he looks at Jim, in profile just a few inches ahead of him, he feels held. He doesn’t know if Jim could defeat Khan, whether in a gunfight or simply by outrunning him. He doesn’t know if there are bullets left in the gun at the small of his back, or the spare in Spock’s own pack. He hasn’t thought about it since that night in Winslow, didn’t feel the need to. But he supposes he’d better start, since he can feel Khan approaching, despite what Jim says, can hear the rumble of them in their wake. Jim is a rock to him, Jim knows what he is doing. Jim looks at him gently every time he can feel himself slipping, pulls him hand over fist back into the real world, calls him back into Earth’s orbit. 

The country itself is beautiful, and it always reminds him of the softness of the world that hosts their very human wars. Always carefully following his map, Jim leads them around Death Valley through national parkland and mountains, green and cold, and sparsely populated, which means endless campsites, and towns where they can stroll around and not be concerned about being snuck up upon. It means motels. They stay the night the day after the riverside in a small, quaint little building, in Olancha, California, in the shadow of a snow-capped mountain, with a larger bill than they are used to which Jim counts out down to dollar bills, throws him a guilty smile, and says they’re only a few days from home, and can afford it. 

Spock forgives him quickly, once he gets underneath the showerhead in their one-bedroom, standing with his hands out against the wall in front of him and watching the steam rise around his feet, marveling at the technological miracle of heated water, thawing and reveling until a hand smacks the curtain to his side and makes him jump, then a muffled voice telling him to hurry, or he’ll just jump right in with him (not something he needs). 

He thinks they can stay in that room for a month, the warmth of it, and the casualty as compared with he and Jim’s first reunion night. On the bed, Jim slides up right against him, his hair dripping, still in a towel, and points out their location on the map. Under three hundred more miles. If they sleep well, and cover a lot of distance the next day, they could reach San Francisco by Sunday. Sunday, Spock thinks. What a fitting day of the week. Then Jim rifles around in the pack, takes out the half bottle of whiskey, turns on the television, and falls backwards into his lap, and Spock can’t help but laugh at him, so quickly he knows to transition between seriousness and relaxation. 

He looks down at him for too long. 

They don’t have sex.


	5. The Steel Mill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for some mild/implied sexual content and light gore in the last scene

Sunday comes like a holiday, like the small elation of realizing it’s not a normal morning, despite your plans to celebrate the occasion or not. Spock remembers days on the road, back in the Buick, when he’d turn on the radio and hear a crinkled voice proudly announce a Happy Valentines Day, a Merry Christmas - despite his never having celebrated it to begin with. The idea was that things were different, all the people around him joining in unison to recognize something so completely arbitrary. He wakes up on the ground, stretched out under the trees on his back, hearing Jim cough beside him, come shakily to his feet and start to move around, and he realizes, looking up into the clear sky, that it’s their homecoming. He looks up at Jim, and he looks down, and something passes between them, a spark of excitement.

Jim has refused to disclose to him anything concrete about his San Francisco home, always waving a lazy hand and saying “we’ll see” and “it’s complicated”. Spock doesn’t understand how complicated it can really be, and begins to suspect, despite his knowledge of Jim as a man of luxury, after all, that it’s a glorified bridge, or a hostel somewhere, but stays optimistic regardless. 

As they ride, for perhaps the last time in a while, he tries again to coerce information out of Jim, calling over to him casual inquiries that might give him some idea of what to expect at the culmination of their journey.

“You say your friends are here?”

“My San Francisco friends.”

“You all live in the same building?”

“Uh huh.”

“How’s the rent?”

“Well. It’s not set in stone. We like a sense of community, you know. It’s a real futuristic society. You give and get back, we share most things.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s alright.”

Eyes ahead, keeping Tango at a pace just an inch faster than they’ve settled at over the course of their odyssey, Spock rides the rest of the way in silence. Constantly he scans the horizon, as they round the San Francisco bay and work deep into the forest, through redwoods and steep paths, for what, he isn’t sure, but when Jim’s hand snaps up beside him, his voice full of wild glee, he is glad he does.

“There we go. I knew we were comin’ the right way.”

Behind the trees, Spock can’t see much of it. They’ve been worming their way around the highway, and he immediately knows that it lies just off of it, behind the intricacy of towering trees encircling he and Jim. He does see a structure, if nothing else. Something towering, something indiscernible until they get much closer.

“Does anyone know we’re coming?”

“Not today. At least three people know I was plannin’ on coming back this way sometime after I settled things with Pike. That was ages ago, though. I haven’t done a very good job of keepin’ up. We might have some angry individuals on our hands.”

“Jim.”

“I’m kidding.” He smiles with his bottom lip between his teeth, like he’s trying to conceal his happiness at returning to this place, the dark and silver thing hovering closer now, apocalyptic in its stature, long structures like chimneys sticking up like tarnished bones. After ten minutes of carefully picking their way between the trees in silence, he is faced with the side of something, a straight face of metal, tarnished and rusting with disuse, and looks back at Jim for direction, who beckons him with a cock of his head to follow as they lead the horses around the side. Above his head, Spock can see railings, platforms like levels, and stairs working around the side of the building.

“What is this?”

“Steel mill.” Jim calls back to him casually, albeit a slight bit prideful, and it occurs to him that he might have just asked to begin with, and saved himself all the wondering. One thing is right, Khan might have a hard time finding them in the intricacy of a dilapidated steel mill, but it feels like an odd hideout, a bit clubhouse-like, on a much grander scale, of course. He can’t even begin to ask how Jim stumbled across it.

“Steel mill.” He’s definitely correct. Spock has never been to a steel mill, but, inexplicably, this feels like one. 

As they round to what seems to be the front of the behemoth, something flashes over his head, not a bird, something audible, on one of the levels interlacing above. He shoots Jim a look, who glances up only for a moment, then stops in his tracks, and doesn’t seem to have any intention of moving. For some reason, Spock doesn’t dare to ask him what happens now, has a suspicion the movement above meant something to do with their presence. He sees another brief movement, hears a click like a gun safety. Then, in front of him, something opens.

The door is hidden, a great metal thing that seemed to be another face of the wall at first glance. But as he watches, it slides open with only a small rattle, opening a bright, and cavernous space he only catches a glimpse of before Jim is dismounting at his side. 

He watches him step forward, smile wide across his face as he amicably greets the man who seems to have enchanted the door to open, a sprightly, mustached man in a dirty jumpsuit who hurries over the threshold to take his hand, pumping it up and down with force that makes Spock nervous, all while berating Jim for his mysterious absence in a Scottish accent so thick he can't make out half the words. Jim raises a hand back his way as if to put him on display, introduces him, and thankfully the doorman doesn't offer his hand, only nodding up in his direction with a more civil touch.

"Scotty's the man behind half of this, the reason I got a hideout to begin with."

"Hideout? Don't tell me you-" Jim raises a hand to cut him off, waving away the question as if nothing that happened in Arizona was real, as if they haven't been scrambling across the west with a homicidal biker gang at their heels for the past two weeks. Spock can't blame him for wanting to undermine it, but the ease at which he does so surprises him.

"I'll explain to everyone later. Might be trouble, but nothin' we can't handle.”

"Whatever ye say." Scotty's tone of unease is a great comfort, nevertheless. "Suppose you'd better come on in, I'm sure everyone knows you're here by now."

Spock watches Jim agree, start to follow before whirling and realizing Spock hasn't dismounted, then waiting as he slides down and returns to his side.

"What about the horses?"

Jim throws a look over his shoulder at the two, who have started to graze and turn away like the magnitude of the situation hasn't quite stricken them the same.

"Let 'em wander." He shrugs. "They deserve some time off, don't you think?"

"I suppose so."

"It's safe here. No need to worry about them, if they wander off we can just call them back later." Then his hand is at the small of Spock's back, firmly guiding him forward - he can tell Jim is anxious to get inside, and wants him close, though he can't imagine why.

Scotty, who is now standing back at a sort of console built into the side of the wall and sending the door sliding back upon its rails, seems to have been correct in saying people have become aware of Jim's arrival. Though the mill itself seemed completely abandoned from the outside, human beings seem to be sprouting out of the woodwork everywhere he looks, wide-eyed, adults of all ages and color, shapes and sizes, looking down at them like they come from another planet, looking at Jim like a prodigal son. 

Many people approach them with things to say to Jim, taking his hand, some kissing his cheek, all of whom Jim introduces like old friends, despite surely not having known them before his departure less than four years ago. Spock would like to believe he’s polite to them all, but their location only continues to baffle him, as he looks around the inside of the mill and tries to make sense of it. 

They’ve entered into a sort of lobby that seems as bright and lively as a shopping mall, only twice as expansive, and constructed entirely of metal, from the steel terracing that runs the length of it, to the ceiling fifty feet up strung with long, white lights in succession that illuminate the whole space, to the floor beneath his feet. The lights aren’t much, but by the way they reflect, everything is as clear as if they were in the sunlight itself. Jim fits into it very well, nevermind the people, but his rugged cleanliness seems drawn almost directly from the dented, tarnished surfaces and the rusting and abandoned machinery surrounding them.

As they stroll forward into the lobby more, Spock notices areas closed off, some with wood, others with long, draping cloth hung from the rafters of the lower level, little subsects, and he begins to understand that this is a sort of compound, a secret little city hidden behind the unobtrusive, lifeless shield of the steel mill. He can understand very easily why Jim’s first thought to hide from Khan was this place, then wonders if any of his neighbors may be in similar situations. They do not give the impression of being here out of necessity, however, there is a warmth about the place, and about how they address Jim. And it is more than clear how happy Jim is within this strange behemoth, all but pulling Spock along to meet old friends, then up on the top level where, tucked into a corner, is his territory, his “quarters”, as he calls the structure. 

And why wouldn’t he be happy? Spock has always known his ability to thrive at the center of things, as he is now, as long as he still holds the freedom to wander away when the homesickness for the road strikes again.

There is no hope of keeping up with all the people he is introduced to within the first hour they spend inside, but Jim makes perfectly clear which ones mean the most to him, and Spock is sure he will be crossing paths with again. There is Scotty, for a start, and then a woman introduced to him as Janice Rand, a small, greying blonde character of roughly Jim’s age who shakes Spock’s hand with a tight-lipped smile and who he may imagine regards Jim as a very distant past lover, courteously expressing her gratitude for his safe return. On the top floor, behind a curtain that reveals the glass ceiling of a remarkable greenhouse, he and Jim find a man called Sulu, who smiles widely in his enclosure of plants that Spock can’t begin to try and identify, and glances knowingly at Spock for a moment that sends him deep into thought almost halfway through meeting two women who look frighteningly like day and night. Christine Chapel, Nyota Uhura. He will remember their names.

And then there is a McCoy, a very southern, older man who Jim deems the community medic, to which he corrects with annoyance that he is a doctor, and only stays because without him every single one of them would probably catch cholera from each other and probably revert to treatment via bloodletting within the week. Spock receives the impression that Jim and this man are in actuality quite close friends, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary, thinks he sees something playful in Jim’s eye that reminds him of being caught between him and Pike all that time ago.

There are certainly more, he can tell by the sheer number of enclosures they pass, as he begins to question Jim once more about the sustainability of such a place.

“How do you all get access to food, other things, as far away from the city as you are?”

“A few of us make a grocery run once a week. And, well. A few of us have gardens set up, fruit trees planted, stuff like that. We’re only about half self-sustainable.”

“How long has this existed?”

“It’s been a passion project for a few of us. Mostly Scotty, but he has a whole circle of engineers who just got fed up with the city and put together their skills to unseal this place, clean it, set up solar electricity, lights, running water. The best part is no one outside those living here know it exists, and a select few outsiders that are trusted. Not even the law.”

“Fascinating.”

Jim shoots him a glance. He didn’t realize the reverence in his tone.

“Well, it is.”

“No, no, you’re right.”

“How did you get involved?”

“I knew Bones. Doctor McCoy.” He corrects himself, affirming that they are in fact, close enough for nicknames despite their clash. “We met in the city, back when I was new in town, still living out of pocket. Still all fucked up from leaving...you know. He introduced me to some of the fellas who set it all up, who liked my looks, or something, cause they invited me on board. Back then, the few who knew from the start were picking up anyone they knew who looked like they would pull their weight, hard workers fallen on bad times, you know. Some of us still have jobs in the city, we commute, and the paper money comes in handy. I had one back before I left, didn’t even bother quittin’, in fact. It all happened very quickly, my leaving.”

As usual, Spock thinks, but knows it isn’t worth saying. 

Spock expects there to be no sense of the time of day in such a brightly-lit, near windowless enclosure, but to his surprise, the lights seem to have dimmed in the time he and Jim have spent wandering. He points this out to Jim, who chuckles and tells him of the solar panels on the roof, how it's all timed with the sun. 

For all the naturalistic liveliness of the mill, he can't help wondering over the technological progressiveness that underlies the whole society. It no doubt took a great deal of rigging and construction to set it all up, not to mention the temperature control - an even 75, by the feel of it. And he hasn't even learned of their system of refrigeration, of plumbing, of stealthy correspondence with the outside. It all immensely fascinates him, feels like a spaceship, something from three hundred years in the future. And he can understand as well, why Jim would call it home, someone who was never good at steady living, someone who could never pay rent or upkeep a building on his own, didn't possess the discipline to do so. He is thinking of them like wild animals again, burrowing in this invisible, constant place to hide from the lion behind them, pressed chest to chest in the corner of this warren, behind cloth and wood and steel, and the shelter of eachother's skin. 

Jim's quarters of the mill are very unmistakably his, Spock has no idea how else to put it. There is the same rusticness that reminds him of another home, of the ranch with Pike, a masculine, homely corner walled on three sides by steel, and the other by wood nailed in slats and bringing the illusion of their bedrooms in Texas. His bed is a mattress and box spring, only the essentials of a bed, as is Jim, and spread with a woven blanket that seems homemade, something he must have bartered for within the compound.

And there are books. This fact catches his breath when he first steps behind the curtain of Jim's door. There are books piled in a corner, more books than he could have read in all the time he spent here. It brings Spock back to their ranch days in a dramatic burst of realization, though there isn't any shelf for them, the reality that he still reads like a schoolboy, dog-eared fictions that sit in messy piles against one another, consuming and moving on, still so fascinated with unreality as he always was. He wonders if he reads like he did back then, a pocketbook sticking out of his jeans where now he's gotten used to seeing a loaded gun, stretched out on one of his "breaks" in the stable, holding it up in one hand, held open by his thumb. 

It is such a mindless detail, and one he knows Jim wouldn't like for him to point out, but he appreciates the visual evidence of it immensely, more than he'll ever say. He hasn't read himself in what feels like a year, suddenly found himself disinterested in illogical knowledge, in fantasy that he would never experience. It's very romantic, he thinks, and he doesn't wear romance well. 

"I'm climbing out the window, you see, after I hear them ridin' into town, I've got two guns and I'm hoping I can just make a break for the car when I realize there's someone outside." A strategic pause for a drink. "So naturally, I panic, I get him against the wall with my gun and I realize it's this clown, coming to tell me that I need to get out of town before my head gets blown off."

Jim is sitting in the middle of a long arc of their compound neighbors, cross-legged, cradling a thermos of something in one hand that Scotty offered him before they gathered around the furnace. His other hand rests in the space between their thighs, courteous enough to allow Spock his own space in the presence of so many - despite the subtle impressions of sexual liberalism he gets from the community. Jim speaks of Khan to them like a romantic, describing the passion of his pursuit over half the country, the dramatism with which he deprived him of his vehicle, the lengths he had to go to to acquire a horse - which he glosses over, to Spock's relief.

“You know, my sister called me a while back and mentioned someone kinda looking like him. Tall mexican fella. Beautiful hair. Said he looked like a vampire. Something creepy about him, inhuman. It was a month ago, she lives just out of Reno, it would line up with your story. Carries a copy of some book around with him, Moby Dick, I think she said.”

The addition comes from one of the rugs overlapped around the floor closer to the fire, where the two women Spock met earlier are stretched out, one partially in the other's lap, the tall, blonde one, Chapel, hardly raising her head to point it out.

"Just your type, then?" Uhura over her head. Whatever this means, it seems to annoy her counterpart greatly.

“Maybe so." Jim replies with a smile. "Barring the supernatural aspects."

"How come?" And suddenly others are piping up from around them, with something they heard from someone or other about Khan's gang, quips about their nature, killers who ride from dusk to dawn, who drink the blood of sheep, who don't age or bleed themselves, deathless phantoms, ghost riders. Though it is all terribly interesting, and theatrical, he can see Jim begin to tense at his side, hand the thermos over to him and rub his hands together in his lap, pop his knuckles quietly under the voices racing back and forth in front of them.

One thing is constant, they all recall Moby Dick. Some of the iterations include bloodstained pages, a torn cover, or a bookmark braided from locks of victim's hair.

"No." Jim's voice is so firm that it catches him off guard, and he turns to meet his eye as the room falls into silence.

"Khan is a human man. Like any of us. He's a real person who happens to have friends and a gun, but that's all. And I have that too."

Everyone goes austerely quiet, some nodding, Scotty with an under-the-breath "aye".

"I haven't seen Chekov." Jim pipes up again, in an obvious attempt to break the sudden tension.

"Drove off about a week ago, didn't tell any of us." 

"Think he's hitting some kind of mid-life crisis."

Spock doesn't bother inquiring who they're talking about. Something about Jim's reaction to the Khan conversation has him deep in thought once more, and it doesn't help that the few drinks he took from Jim are already beginning to creep up on him.

“Mid-life? How old is he now, twenty? Twenty-one?”

“He’s thirty-eight, Jim.”

"Are you sure? How old does that make me?" Fuzzy, gentle laughter all around them.

Not long after that, Jim excuses them both, with claims of needing sleep, which Spock very much appreciates. He is long past his phase of staying awake through the night, only being able to drift off when on Tango, who Jim leaves only a moment after they return to his quarters to call back, maybe to tie up in the garage with Leila’s horse for the night, and now the weight of the journey hits like lead in his veins, and sends him collapsing back at the foot of the bed, stretching and listening to his joints pop.

Spock wakes up to the feeling of Jim collapsing against his back, winding his arm around his ribcage, hand settling somewhere under his chin. He didn't mean to fall asleep, meant to wait for Jim's return from the horses, and must have dozed off in that time, despite it neither being a horse's back or from being knocked unconscious, but Jim must realize he's awake again, because as he lies there, not speaking, he can feel the tip of his nose against the shaggy back of his head (remembers he desperately needs a haircut), and his lips against his neck, warm, pressing and lingering, a small, bare action that seems to have no meaning or motivation. At first, he lays, staring at the steel wall and waits for Jim to continue in some way, to do it again, maybe lower, maybe more forcefully, something to indicate more is wanted, but when there is nothing, and then he is worried he intends to fall asleep as well, something feral takes him over, something definitely influenced by whatever he and Jim were drinking all evening, and he wrenches himself away from Jim's protective grasp, and flips himself over.

Jim only looks up at him, at first, his abandoned arm laying like a beheaded snake on the blanket between them, blinking and curious, but turns onto his back without a word, puts both hands on Spock's forearms, grips him tightly, and pulls him back down onto his chest. 

Their third kiss is too easy. Too effortless, without the elation, dizziness of the first two, but that could be the lack of freezing water, could be the alcohol. And it could be that they've fallen, with only a little break of the ice, into that wonderful and mindless animalism of their ranch selves. He knows they're happy. Perhaps that's all that has ever mattered, no matter what they do. It isn't logical, it is entirely brimming with romanticism, but for the first time in a while, Spock realizes he doesn't care. Jim's hand is on his ear again, like an apron string, returning to it out of instinct. 

Spock remembers it warmly for the first time. He had thought it would come off easier if he started at the bottom, thought it was softer there, and would be a better place to begin. His mind was cream, so thoughtless, so stupid, and he didn't break face when he leaned over the bathroom sink in his father's house, flicked open the straight razor from the medicine cabinet, and pushed the blade up underneath his earlobe, tugging the appendage itself away from his face with the opposite hand as he did so. He thought he looks like his mother doing her makeup in the morning, bottom lip held between her teeth in concentration, cocking his chin enough to get the optimal angle.

Jim's holding his ear, his little finger up against the bottom of it like that thin blade, and for a moment, inebriated as he is, he can almost feel the sudden welling of hot blood where it sits, the sudden, dark lines that raced down the side of his neck, the sharp throb where the razor is held. He can feel it collecting in the fabric of his shirt, his bandana, the clatter of the dirty razor in the sink bowl after the pressure disappears, Jim's fingers already hurrying at the buttons of his shirt to save it from most of the blood, tearing it away from his shoulders.

Spock watches him do it, sits on his stomach with his legs either side of his torso and watches him peel his bloody clothes away from him, and undo his jeans, throwing them away, trying to remove the scent of it. He remembers something he learned once in a survivalist guide, completely out of nowhere, to cover yourself in blood and play dead if you're being hunted by man with a gun. And yet, he feels so deathless, he feels Jim's hands all over him, reaching across space to connect them, wrapping around his cock inside his jeans, dragging it out, pushing him back onto the bed.

Spock wakes up again.

☆

From the light coming under the cloth door, he imagines it is around midday, his typical morning over the past week. 

He and Jim, who is still curled up at his side, have recovered from their trip by now by way of laying flat on their backs through the afternoon half-drunk, talking about days on the ranch, talking about things that happened in their absence, eating ridiculous amounts of food, giving each other orgasms, reading Moby Dick out loud, and most importantly, sleeping. The mill has grown on him easily, the people too, and they never disturb the strange ritual of he and Jim's adjustment.

Most of them are artists, intelligent people, some with jobs, some not. He quickly learns it's a very functional society, and entirely liberal in a way that should feel freeing but sets him on edge instead. To see women publically hand in hand, men too, in conjunction with carelessness and happiness. Around total strangers such as himself. It's an entirely alien concept, and leaves him feeling very outdated, despite knowing the outside world has not left behind any of the heterocentrism woven into every facet of existence - also a fact that never occurred to him until he accepted the existence of others like him, and stopped thinking of them as sharing an affliction.

He and Jim still ride together. It is perhaps the most comforting aspect of the whole bizarre situation, though they don't ride far, and the flat country isn't much more than a slight circle around the mill, which incites a vague unease when he thinks of Khan again, lurking between their cover. Nature is half their stronghold, if it were to betray them now, he thinks it would hurt worse than the bullet in his back, as senseless as that is. But it is worth it for Tango, to keep them together. She doesn't seem at all unhappy tucked away where the cars are kept, fed sugar cubes he brings from the grocery in the city, vegetables and all assortment of discarded garden crops. He and Jim set up a stable for them in the corner of the overhang, line the grass with hay and nail a water basin against the wall, and stock feed bags in the corner with their remaining money from the trip. Jim mentions picking up a job in the city, maybe asking around the mill for some leads, and it occurs to Spock he should do the same, but it can wait. Jim stresses that they will be provided for for as long as they need, and Spock trusts him.

Again, and again it occupies his mind how happy Jim is. The steady bedrest has filled out the last bit of vacancy in his image from the shell he was when they first crossed paths again. He's stupid, cheerful and often drunk, spending lots of time in a sort of makeshift cellar with Scotty, who Spock has learned brews all sorts of things he doesn't even know the name of in addition to engoneering the entire mill. Things which he hands to Jim. Who hands them to Spock. Which he drinks, asks what it is always but never remembers what Jim says in a few hours. He is forcibly reminded of the fact that he hasn't drank much in his life, aside from these nights with Jim, since he lived with Pike, and even then his dollar store six packs of beer never knocked him off his feet like the concoctions he puts in his body night after night with Jim, and no fear of letting something slip past his careful boundaries towards him, just warmth, and a large mattress, and no alarm. It is calmer than anything he has ever known, living with Jim. He is thoughtless, deathless, and most dangerously, falling in love.


	6. Earth to Spock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> explicit sexual content 😔🔫

Beside him, something moves under the blanket, and Spock peers over at his knitted forehead, trying to pull the blanket pinned under Spock further around him, so he gets up, a little dizzy on his feet, and stands in the room and waits for his orientation to return. Then he finds his jeans, which have been scrubbed clean from the dirt of four states and feel tighter now, if that was possible. He gets dressed. He brushes his teeth. The last thing he does is walk back around the side of the bed, drop to his knees, and carefully stick his fingers beneath the rumpled mass of blanket beneath which he knows he'll find a man, taking it gently away from his sleeping face and leaning in to softly touch his lips, hopefully softly enough not to disturb him, but when he rises again, the blanket rustles, and his deep, sleep-addled voice comes drifting up.

"Isn't it nice to not have to glance over your shoulder every time you kiss me?"

He doesn't expect the question, and though it seems very hypothetical in nature, he can't prevent himself from overthinking it, nice, why would it be nice, nice is for clear days, for gestures of affection, for interpersonality. Nice hasn't anything to do with fearlessness. 

"Yes." He says anyways, and it seems to satisfy Jim well enough, because he doesn't respond, and then Spock gathers himself up again to leave.

Where there once must have been an open doorway for one to exit the mill to the top level, a solid piece of steel has been fit to cover it, where Scotty's men rigged a door to slide it away with a lock and then the pull of a lever. He does both without hesitation, so used to the routine by now, and slips into the cold northern air with hardly a sound. 

The trees around the mill are visible from the point he enters upon in a long spread of evergreen, like they gathered up in a gentle circle to behold the sprawling monstrosity of the mill likely a century ago. It is a good point from which to keep guard of the rusting palace, and the mornings are so silent, so gentle in this place, that he doesn't mind braving the cold just to sit and witness it all.

It has rained since he and Jim came, and they could hear it lighting upon the outside every reverberant surface of the main atrium, of which there are many, and it felt like something very otherworldly. The air now is clean, sharp and wet and brighter than anything he's ever really known. Despite the long stretches lately where he's been so drunk he can hardly think, he values these moments of clarity intensely, where he can feel on top of it all, not a scurrying animal caught in the fray of existence. Not pursued. 

He is sure Khan will catch up to them. He isn't frightened by it. Jim seems to know too. He doesn’t appear to be frightened by it, either. They take each day one at a time, and they do not worry.

Spock stands out on the terrace until the cold sinks in too deep, stands still with his hands on the railing and with closed eyes, imagining himself on a tree branch. He isn’t thinking of Khan, but when there’s a thump somewhere behind him, something soft against metal, he still jumps out of his skin. Expecting to see him scaling the side of the scaffold, white hair whipping about in the cold air, pistol cocked in Spock’s direction, his back hits the railing, he reaches around his waist for a weapon that doesn’t exist, then realizes the air in front of him is clear. In fact, there is no one on the terrace at all. 

Spock doesn’t believe in omens. There is no depth to the disbelief, he simply doesn’t find their existence probable. Not that he isn’t a spiritual man, not that he is either, but he has never imagined there to be a correspondence between higher powers, much less working in his favor to notify him of things to come. Yet his first thought when he locates the source of the sound, is of a very deliberate omen.

The clear sky makes it easy to spot the origin, and confirm his suspicion. A dark shape of a bird of prey soars over the trees to his left, which all but discounts the omen hypothesis. Though the probabilities of it losing grip on its prey at the precise moment it would take for it to land directly behind where Spock stands now, on a strip of metal only five feet wide, are remarkable.

The prey - a sparrow, by the look of it at his feet - is clearly dead, if it hadn’t been when it’s predator lost grip. There is something very saddening about that fact to him, that it might have freed itself from certain death only to plummet into a sooner one. And something prideful in it nevertheless. Dying on your own terms. The little body curled into itself, stiff, the legs tucked up against the soft chest. 

He doesn’t quite know what should be done about it. Perhaps the falcon will return for it? Surely it wouldn’t accept the loss so easily. At any rate, he feels uneasy about leaving it in the path like so, so he bends down to it, cups his hands around the round body, and lifts it to the railing, balancing it in the corner where it connects to the wall.

☆

Jim is awake when he returns to their room, already pulling him over, and the warmth of him after so long in the cold air sets him to melting immediately. They spend another day not doing much of anything, swapping a bottle of Scotty’s home-brewed whiskey between them, and Spock forgets about the sparrow.

“I love you drunk, you know." On his empty stomach, he can already feel his thoughts slipping not ten minutes after laying down with Jim, opposite sides of the bed, their heads in the middle.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

"You're not so rigid, I guess."

Sober, he would have taken offence, but now he can only smile and further prove his point. But it is hard to stay rigid, he supposes, after everything. There was a time he valued his stoicism over near everything in his life. Composure was a sign of discipline (was a sign of maturity). But in walled-in, private moments like this with Jim, like their times on the ranch together, with no witness, he finds it hard to care like he used to. 

They’ve lapsed once more into silence, and he closes his eyes, thinks of them flat on their backs on the stable floor, hiding out from Pike again, not doing anything, but just revelling in the pristine moment in each other’s company, one of the few they were able to share each day. And in that instant where they lay undisturbed, unwitnessed, it is easy to shrug off the weight of their lives, the pain of the past and the fear of the future, and exist, without obligations. And sparrows.

"I wanna fuck you."

For the first time, Spock finds he’s run out of thoughts.

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Jim."

"I've done it before. I mean both ways. It's not like you think, it's...I wouldn't bring it up if I wasn't sure you'd like it."

"I'm not sure."

"Alright."

Silence.

“You think about fucking me?”

“Mmm.”

“Have you always?”

“Not always.”

"Since Texas?"

The response is delayed, as if he had to think back to be sure.

"Yeah."

He doesn’t know what to say, or do in response. He thinks Jim may let it go. The ceiling is laced with steel rafters, same as all over the mill. Straight channels interlacing like the road map of a big city. The fuzziness from the alcohol has drained from his mind, and now, no matter how he fishes around for a trail of thought to occupy the silence, this consciousness is a dark ring of vacancy like a pool of clear water.

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“Well, of course not.” His laugh isn’t so nervous as Spock anticipates, in fact, he isn’t nervous-sounding at all. Spock doesn’t doubt he is being truthful about everything he’s said. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Jim turn over, slowly, like approaching something wild, and rest his chin on his folded hands. Part of him wants to say "What do you mean, of course not?", but for once he doesn't want a debate. For once, he wants to be silent. To retreat into himself, hide his face, but still go through with it, just far away enough to not take responsibility.

"I'll need another drink, first."

Their first night in the mill, the wondrous realization that they were safe and alone had hit like a stampede thundering over them, they were vibrating with the force of it, they were wild and moon-crazy, clawing into each other like they were trying to entangle themselves into one indistinguishable form. He was not afraid of himself like he is now, still stiff and unsure even after knocking back the rest of their whiskey supply, even with the same anxious intensity from Jim's hands and mouth rippling over him, even with the small burn where Jim's hand lands on his abdomen after their clothes are off, even with his bare chest, the scar across it from something that had happened on the ranch that Spock doesn't remember, his thighs, the gentle, wild look on his face.

He arranges it up into little pieces, like bullet holes in the door he sets himself behind, a brief sensation, the words that pass between them, the way his heart leaps when Jim's hands land firmly on his waist and jerk him forwards on top of him. It paralyzes him. He would like to think he is present, and he is, can feel every touch upon his skin, can hear every word directed at him, but he can't help it, the pull at his skin that has nothing to do with Jim's hands, like someone inside of him is straining to be free. Turning him into a cage, his bones thinning into bars. If he let himself from three years ago talk, he would probably further the metaphor, be confused by the backwards effort taken now to infiltrate it, the stronghold of his existence that couldn't possibly hold anything worth the strength, that was lying in some way, without Spock himself knowing it.

One hand on his shaft, thumb coursing idly over the curve of it, it occurs that Jim’s lowered face, the soft expression is no different than how he looks reading, or braiding his old horse's mane. Like a natural ritual, even with his other hand turning, now grazing between his legs. He feels like a wasp colony, and someone is contemplating sticking his finger into it, it's terrifying, and not very much different from thoughts he might bear three years ago. Then he glances up, meets Spock's eyes in a frighteningly exposed moment of contact, and pushes him away. 

"Where's your Vaseline? Can you get it?"

He's never scrambled for something so fast in his life, fishing the little blue container out from his coat pocket hanging on the wall and passing it into Jim’s waiting hands, awkwardly resuming his position on the bed as he unscrews it. Silently, he waits as Jim discards the lid, swipes his fingers around inside, rubs them together, one hand running up Spock’s thigh as he does, then putting it away, bringing his hand further up, thumb against the base of his shaft. Then his fingers are back underneath him, pressing slowly into him - the fluttering insects hammering against his chest, agitated, threatened - staring at his face all the time, and for the first time he catches a flash of nervousness in his hazel eyes. It isn’t particularly painful, just tight, he tries to tell Jim so, but there’s a twist in his fingers that catches the words in his throat, that brings heat into his face, and some smile above him that he doesn’t have the composure to question.

“You don’t have to lie so still, you know.” His fingers are still working up inside of him, adding another one, pushing inside up to his hand. Jim could be splitting him open with a knife, he could be irreparable, and he thinks he’d lie there all the same. Jim must not expect a response anyways, because he bends his fingers in that way that makes Spock’s whole body shiver once again, and in the ensuing haze Spock can see him reaching back for the Vaseline, scooping it into the fingers of his other hand and bringing them down where he can’t see. Then his fingers are out, both hands now at his hips again, then upending them both.

The vacancy where he was so full only a moment ago is a feeling Spock doesn’t know how to analyze, doesn’t know where to begin to, but the soft touch once again of Jim’s mouth on his, the bitter tang of the whiskey shared between them is one that brings him back, then his hands that run up and down and soothe all the tension building up inside, moving where he can’t feel them, or see them, then ducking his head against his chest.

“Can I?”

Fortunately, he can muster the self-composure to say yes, this one time.

Among the plethora of thoughts that he endures in this one moment with Jim, there is one that strikes him as a great revelation. It seems much siller later, when he is thinking clearer, and isn’t clinging with everything in him to Jim’s back as he’s softly rending him apart, but in the moment, it is something very changing. Maybe he is hypocritical for doing so, but he has always borne the secret suspicion, in conjunction with his surety that he was a trap, a cage and a liar, that perhaps Jim was just another of his particular breed. That he could be anyone, and their irregular, estranged marriage is one that relies more on convenience than much else. 

Then, he has this feeling. It is a horrible feeling, and a frightening feeling, that he would never let another man, not even Christopher Pike himself if he was back on his feet like the first day they met, be where Jim is now, encircling him, pressing up inside of him, tightly held between his own two legs. He would never allow it, not any man but the one against his chest now. Which means it doesn’t have to do with a single thing aside from love, which has crept up on him like a hunter’s rifle somewhere between Texas and San Francisco, and whose bullet has sat within numb skin up until today. He can hardly feel Jim moving inside him, can hardly feel a thing but the cold sweat across his skin and the lump in his throat until it’s gone, and Jim’s holding his face, both hands against his cheeks, asking if he’s alright, and he wants to cry at the sight of him. He is too emotional. He’s always known so. In this moment, it overwhelms.

Every bad thing that has happened since Jim, Jim’s leaving, the event with Pike and the bronco, Jim’s return after Spock left to find him, Khan, Leila, all of it would be gentler on his mind if not for the fact that he loved him, even then. Ever since he started on this journey with Jim, he had himself nearly convinced that none of it mattered much, that this was just another gust of wind to pull him in a new direction, an objective, for a while. Now, he is realized all at once, at the most inopportune moment, that it isn’t true. That for as long as Jim will stay this time, he’ll cling to him, whether on his own terms or on Khan’s.

“Earth to Spock.”

“Yes. Please continue.”

“Where did you go?”

“Nowhere.” Even averting his eyes from the brazen tenderness with which Jim stares at him, he can tell he isn’t going to accept it just like that, he is too conscientious. “Please.”

“Alright, impatient.”

Spock learns a few more things. It is an evening of realizations.

The first thing he learns is that real sex, what he has been - despite himself - been anticipating ever since he found Jim in Winslow, feels nothing like anything else, and only vaguely similar in nature to what he and Jim have been doing. Even slow, he feels like a smoldering mass, every time pressure hits that soft spot inside him that Jim's fingers found earlier, he has to grit his teeth not to gasp out loud. Yet he knows Jim won’t move any faster, is too concerned for him, though he wishes he could tell him it's not painful, that he doesn't mind it anymore, not like he did when they started.

The second thing is metaphysical, and it is that he is beginning to experience the odd security that he does on horseback, a physical completeness that he's been so used to lacking that he never noticed it until it was there, that he feels held, feels ironically tucked within another being that knows better than himself. He has felt it with only one other human, and not like this, not with the fervor and reciprocity that Jim offers. He hears his own voice, half-choked in Jim's shoulder, and his warm hand between them, touching him, and the thought disappears as he's pulled even closer, the smoldering mass against Jim's human skin, so bravely pressed into him. They're moving faster then, sending sparks up his entire body, and Jim's hand around him goes tighter, and in the sudden fear of crying out he presses his open mouth against Jim's shoulder.

"Alright?" 

His response is nothing more than a sound, pitifully worse than Jim's breathless inquiry, but it seems to be enough because he lets go of him once again, tearing away for only a moment to lay both hands against the backs of his thighs and push them up, bending him at the waist so roughly it sends a bolt of flame up his chest. For a moment before he slips back into Spock's arms he sees his face, which still manages to be full of softness, though shot across with a red flush, blown out pupils. His hand is back around Spock's shaft, sliding around it in time with his own thrusts, steadily picking up speed and he realizes Jim's intent on something just as it creeps up on him. 

If not for the firm plane of Jim's shoulder holding him against the bed, Spock thinks he would explode, so filled with heat and energy that twists his nerves like bare wires for a handful of primal seconds that he hardly finds the strength to let him go. He's shaking harder than he did in the river, aware of every small sensation from the bedsheets against his back to the wetness against Jim's still hand and spilled across his abdomen, to Jim slowly pulling his cock out of him, holding him with one hand and pressing his closed mouth against his shaking thigh. It takes all his remaining strength to raise his head enough to watch him quickly driving himself to orgasm, face pressed against Spock's own skin with a misplaced, drowsy reverence that makes it entirely worth the effort. Lowering his head again between his legs, a string of thoughtless kisses up his abdomen, his hands on either side of his waist, then pressing his cheek flat against his sternum, still breathing heavily, chest rising and falling against his stomach. Then he sits back, running his hand halfway up Spock's stomach where he still lays, and looking away somewhere into the distance.

The third thing Spock learns is that he is stronger than he thinks.

Lying on the bed in silence, still connected to Jim only by his hand, he watches the ceiling until, at the corner of his vision, Jim raises a hand to his neck and rubs it, then glances at his hand and laughs. A tired, half spoken sort of laugh.

"You broke my skin."

He somehow finds it in himself to raise his head once more, just to see a flushed mark on the trapezius of his neck he's prodding, looking at him with a teasing annoyance. 

"I didn't mean to." And of course he didn't, hardly remembers his teeth against him at all.

"It's alright, no. I'll take it as a compliment." He smiles again, returns his hand to one of Spock's legs and idly runs the length of it. "I think our vampire friend Khan may have infected you without our noticing."

"That's ridiculous."

"You're so beautiful."

"Excuse me?"

"It's nice to see you like this. You're blushing. I mean it, though."

“I’m not.” Spock doesn't believe he looks so nice as Jim lets on, feels like a sweaty, tousled wreck, but Jim is such a romantic. At least his instinct isn’t to turn away anymore, like it used to be. Jim’s lifting himself from the bed, wiping his hands on his thighs, picking up his jeans from the floor.

“I’m going to take a shower, if you want to come along.”

“I think I’ll stay here for a while.”

“Are you hungry? Should I bring anything back?”

“No.” 

For a moment, Jim hesitates, smile wide, still looking at him in that way that makes him close his eyes, makes him feel childishly bashful, and then makes him jump when his lips land against the top of his head without warning, chaste and sweet as he would kiss a barncat, then already in the doorway by the time Spock opens his eyes.

“I love you.”

The fourth thing Spock learns is that.

☆

Expecting to sleep, Spock doesn’t move in all the time Jim spends out, crosses his arms behind his head and arches his back, cracks his joints and tries to notice if he feels different at all than he did this morning, if there’s any new wisdom in him. He feels warm, all over, even alone. There is much for him to think about, many unfinished thoughts in his head.

Jim’s words to him before leaving seem to hover still in the doorway, a call without a response, an unexpected factor in it all. Did Jim catch what he was thinking only half an hour before? Did something pass between them that Spock was too preoccupied to notice, something that gave away his reciprocated thoughts? Or did he only say it because it fit, because he needed something to say before leaving, to justify his rushing out so?

Somehow, it doesn’t matter to Spock. He knows his feelings. Perhaps for the first time in a while they are laid out and organized, no longer stuffed haphazard between book pages, hidden under the heel of his boot. And Jim knows his, he’s sure, well enough to have dragged Spock along with him to the mill, well enough to want to fuck him, well enough to invite the layers of old wounds that are opened to the air every second they spend with one another.

When Jim slips back in, hair wet, skin glowing and clean, he brings with him a shadow Spock didn’t anticipate, a look in his eyes he remembers from one night on the road, the day after they started off on horseback, the day after Leila. He can’t recall what he had said to cause it, to know what it means now, but he sits up anyways, and waits patiently for some indication as he moves around the room, putting on clean clothes, his back turned to the bed.

The change is abrupt, suddenly he’s whirling around, smile too deliberate to be authentic, but a smile nonetheless, buttoning up his shirt.

“Are you feeling alright? Not too sore?”

“I’m alright.”

“Good. Do you want to come to the observation deck with me? It’s a little cold, but I want a cigarette. Can’t smoke in here.”

The observation deck is Jim’s affectionate term for the roof of the mill, his favorite place in the whole compound, a trapdoor at the end of a flight of stairs that opens onto a flat stretch of metal roofing level with the treetops, an illusionary biome of foliage and open sky. And it’s clear why, from the resemblance it bears to the open sky and wide, flat country they’d wander in during nights on the ranch together. It is incredibly cold, the sharp air stinging Spock’s eyes the moment he sets foot on the deck and making him grateful for wrapping up in his coat before leaving their room. Jim is nowhere near as bundled, his shirt only buttoned up half his chest, but he never minded the cold as much as Spock has. He thinks briefly back to their romp in the river back at the border. Yes, that much is perfectly clear.

Spock realizes that it’s November again, just like it was when he and Jim made their deal all those years ago. He watches him walk out across the roof, take out his cigarette from a beaten pack that he must have found in his room from the last time he was here, then stand downwind of him to light it, brow furrowing as he does.

“I gotta tell you the rest of the story.”

He doesn’t look at Spock as he says it, glancing at the roof under their feet, scanning for something there, putting off the rest of it, maybe waiting for Spock to say something to push him into it. What do you mean, the rest of the story? Liar. Spock doesn’t say anything, he isn’t awfully surprised, knows part of its stayed hidden, has known for a while. Jim isn’t good at keeping a secret, not around him.

“I told you I ran him off.”

“Right.”

“You look at me like that, and it makes it so much harder.” Half his cigarette is already pulled away, the sad stump of it unsteady in one of his white hands. Spock looks at the floor with him.

“So you ran him off?”

“So I ran him off.” Another pause. Spock is briefly concerned that they’ll have to run through it all again. “So me and Kelso and Mitchell. We ambush Khan, right? We spent a week trading shifts through the night to keep an eye out, after he made off with two good horses. Knew he'd be back. Get their whole gang held up. We broke out the rifles, yknow, they just carried pistols, they still do. We break out the rifles, get them held up, take their guns. Three men with him. Well, we thought.”

He talks very quickly, like he doesn’t have quite enough time, speaking in fragments and facts.

"We didn't want the cops involved, you know. Not behind Pike's back. Wanted to take care of it ourselves. Or I did." His cigarette down to the bud, he stops, raises his boot to grind it out, and before Spock can say anything about it, has another out, already in his mouth. “So we blindfold them, then we get some rope, tie them up so they can’t steer for a while, just a little you know. Just so we could get them good and lost, teach them a lesson. Then we just drive them out into the country, send up a few shots, really spook their horses, they take off like hell’s chasing them. And we didn't have any more attempted robberies, not after that."

"That's smart."

The sound he makes is half-cringe, paired with a quick shake of his head, and followed with a long stretch of silence in which Spock realizes his legs and back are aching still and drops to the roof with folded legs, crossing his arms against the front of his coat to keep warm.

“Do you remember Marla McGivers?” Kirk asks, sounding rather like an interrogator, voice flat, straightforward.

“The new girl? You mean from the ranch?”

“Yeah. Redhead. Kinda quiet, you know. Rich parents in town. Popular.”

Spock does recall her, if only faintly. Pike had brought her on after Jim left, though Spock wasn't ever really sure what she did. She lived in the city, and drove a nice car, and didn't seem to like it much there at all - volunteer work, or something. Despite himself, and the growing unease at Jim bringing her up so sombrely, he can't keep the amusement from his voice.

“You mean Khan was -”

“Next day, she doesn’t come into work. Now, I didn’t put two and two together. I mean it was dark, they all had hats on, bandanas up over their noses when we blindfolded them. I didn’t know her well to begin with. She and Khan were shacking up together, apparently, cause she was helping them get in that whole time. Giving him her key to the stables. We were none the wiser. She stayed out of the way, you know. Completely unsuspicious." He finally stops here, run out, looking over Spock's head into the black. From here, he can hardly see his face, just a blue sheen of moonlight over the planes of his skin. It occurs to him that may be why they came out to begin with for him to tell the story.

“Marla wasn’t any kind of fuckin’ cowboy. She was just some little rich kid, you know. Playing dress up.”

"What happened to her?"

“Khan spelled it out to me well enough. You know, whatever Marla wanted from him, strangest thing, he changed into something terrifying when what happened to her, happened. He cared about her. I’ll never understand it, but I still hear him tellin’ it to me, and the look in his eyes. It’s not enough for him to kill for her, you know they say that’s the ultimate thing.”

"Jim."

"I know, I know. I'm sorry. I can't talk about it directly." His cigarette still between his fingers, he wipes the nose with the back of his hand, then looks down at his feet, back up at Spock and extends it towards him as if through. Spock takes it from him, and he stuffs both hands deep in his pockets as he brings it down against the steel roof, twisting it until the billow of smoke thins and cuts short, and the only disturbance in the air is once again their labored breaths.

“He looked for her for three days. It was summer, you know, must have been August. Hundred and ten degrees. Heat stroke. She got out of the restraints at least, her blindfold, the rope was a full mile away. No clue where the horse ended up, probably bucked her off before she even got out of her binds. Three days. Can you imagine being out there in the flatland for that long? No navigation? No water?"

Cigarette forgotten at his side, Spock glances up. in time to watch Jim's hand shoot back up, turning away again. In the soft light his eyes still gleam. He hasn't said anything about what Spock just did, doesn't seem to intend to. The silence cut through with one quick sniffle, then back.

“I didn’t know how to tell Pike. I never did. You know, there was a lot of talk around town, rumor was she liked her men wild, everyone just assumed she ran away with one. Didn’t surprise anyone. No investigation. If Khan hadn’t been on my heels I would’ve left anyways. How could I stick around knowing I killed the fuckin’ prom queen?”

“Don’t say that.”

“I did. I don’t need to be reassured about it, I’ve perfectly accepted it.”

“That isn’t murder. She was an adult. She knew what she was doing. You’re not giving her enough credit. Dwelling on it won’t bring her back.”

“Alright, Starbuck.”

As lighthearted as the response is, it’s paired with another shake of his head, and the tone is sarcastic, and Spock finds himself accepting that it isn't likely any use. He only half-believes it, himself. 

“I wouldn’t have done it if I had known. Maybe I shouldn’t have at all, you know, but I got back and suddenly everyone was lookin’ to me to pick up the slack and I felt like I had to be firm, you know, run the ranch, make sure Pike had nothin’ to worry about. I thought I was being heroic or something, that I was showin’ everyone we couldn’t be messed with just cause Pike, that we weren’t going down. Pike was so worried we’d have to shut it all down, the whole ranch.”

This admission, though only said in passing, pulls Spock’s attention to Jim’s turned shoulder more viscerally than anything he’s said so far. Not that he should be proud of it, the weight of all Jim’s told him so far is sitting in the bottom of his stomach now and stewing around, and even to begin thinking about how Jim carries it hurts his head. 

So Pike had sent him out, knowing he might not have somewhere to come back to. Deliberately, he had told Spock to leave, who then was his top hand, and why? So he wouldn’t witness the painful decline of their ranch, their life, their history? What was the sense in that? Or did he truly want him to find Jim, hoping they two would return?

"I...appreciate you telling me."

“I’m sorry I had to. I’d keep it all secret if I could, between me and Khan.”

“No, I’m glad you did.”

“I just don’t want you to think I’m John Wayne.” 

“I definitely do not think that.”

Spock looks down at his hands. The cold doesn’t bother him so much anymore, though his fingers look sickly and white, and his nose has started running. In front of him, Jim’s walking back his way, then dropping down like he did when they first came out, keeling over backwards until his back hits the roof, his arms out at his sides. He looks considerably worse than Spock feels, red nose, splotchy cheeks, but something between that and how he lies so still, staring straight up and the rise and fall of his chest is humanizing, is much more comforting than if he stayed upright and serious throughout the entire confession.

"Would you do the same thing?"

That was the awful part of it all. That Spock can’t blame Khan any longer, with what he knows.

"Hm?"

"I mean if it were me."

"It’s not."

"Hypothetically."

“I don’t want to think about it. I don’t ever want to think about it.” 

If Khan kills Jim, he deserves it. Just the thought of it, much like how Jim seems to be dealing with it, makes him sick. Makes him want to pull his bandana up over his head and never face the world again.

“Do you think the ranch is okay?” Jim asks, out of nowhere. “I ask myself that so often. I suppose if it does go under, it’ll be my fault. I think about that a lot. And not just that. Pike too. Do you still think about Pike?”

“Not like I used to.”

“Well, I’d hope not. You just let me fuck you.”

“I mean not like I did when I first started out.”

“I think Pike might be the reason we’re together.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I would have left you in that bar and got away on my own if I didn’t think I could get us a ride.” 

Beyond just that, Spock can’t help thinking. Pike was the reason Spock stayed, didn’t catch a ride back into town that next night and kept driving. Pike taught him to ride. Pike’s attractiveness to him was the reason Jim approached him in the first place. And no matter his warnings about Jim, he never minded him coming back at the latest hours of the night, hair wet from the creek, a bruise on his neck, smelling all over of stable boy. Never faulted him for it. Beyond it all, Pike didn’t mind him, was the first person in his life not to, to allow him to exist as his feral, unsociable self. And it didn’t matter that Spock would bend over backwards for him in an instant, because even though it might not have been clear to an outsider, Pike gave him everything he needed, and didn’t ask for anything in return.

"I'll never understand it. I used to ride that bronco all the time." The fading sickness deep inside him erupts again, choking him, making him turn away - he can’t answer Jim, wants to run away from him, doesn’t want to face that stark honesty. "You know I did. And Pike was better than me at that stuff."

At his side, Jim lays his hand against the roof, taps it, and without thinking Spock’s lying next to him, stretching his legs out and mirroring his snow-angel stance. Somehow it makes it easier to speak, even closer to him, just because they can’t see each other’s faces when they look straight up.

“It wasn’t Pike’s fault. It was the wild horse that finally got fed up of being used like a conversation piece. I went to catch him, you know. I never even saw him. I imagine no one did, again.”

“You were there. I always forget.”

“Mmm.”

Jim clears his throat.

"Did you see it?"

There aren’t any clouds in the sky. In the darkness, Spock can almost illusion the trees around them as heavy billows of a storm, as if they are sitting right on the fringe of the atmosphere. The mill below them the intricate, sprawling mechanics of a space station, a satellite, a starship, and the two of them invulnerable on its hull, throats a little tight from the thinness of the air, but nothing more. Miles above the flat Texas dirt.

“No.” 

All the stars shake their heads at him.

“But it was the aftermath of it that was the hardest part. Just how it changed him. You know how relentlessly he used to leave me alone, and suddenly he was always...asking to see me. Wanting me in the room. Always trying to get me to open up about it. I guess he thought it really shook me up. Always trying to get me to talk.”

“Did you?”

“Of course not. I mean half the time we just passed a notebook back and forth. Even talking out loud felt unfair.”

He understands now why Jim sounded like he did while telling his secret. He wants the words out of his mouth, can feel himself talking too fast, choking on it in his haste. 

They lay still together, like rigamortis-possessed sparrows, for so long Spock wonders if he’ll be able to rise again when he wants to. 

“Do you still know all those constellations?”

“I haven’t looked in a while. Likely not as well as I used to.”

It’s a heartaching reference to their lives on the ranch, Spock’s fascination with the country sky, the clearness of the cosmos in the rural land. His sudden, immense interest with deciphering the hidden art in them, and the transience of their figures, the constant motion of the animals and old Grecians across the night sky. Staying for a while, before slipping away over the horizon. Jim always humored him in this, laying on his back in the field and trying to follow the path of his finger over the air, squinting down at a book that diagrammed it, flashlight held close, trying to catch the impression. That’s the Centaur, he would point up and draw the line of his back with his finger. Jim would laugh, say it looked nothing like a horse at all, and Spock would explain that it isn’t really, of course, this is just what the old astronomers thought they saw, just one perception. Jim trying to make his own constellations. Naming the whip, the two men fighting, the strange sexual act, always things to upset Spock.

“Is that the Centaur?”

“I have no idea what you’re supposed to be pointing at. It wouldn’t be very visible this time of year. May.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“I think I see it.”

“Okay, Jim.”

Stumbling back inside, runny-nosed and shivering, Spock asks Jim if he wants to go back to the ranch when they think enough time has passed. He dreams now of following the trail back, returning Leila her horse, and stopping in the bar in Black Rock. Standing in the room with him and offering him up to Pike like a trophy, I caught him. You were right to send me out. After which, they would ride out again, they would go to Iowa, where Jim lived as a child, to the north and then south again, maybe Mexico. Always, they would return to the ranch, when they needed a rest. And to see Pike, to be runners for him. Telling him about the road.

☆

That morning, wonderfully tangled in each other, there is a knock at the wall, a shadow slipping underneath the curtain, a short, urgent thing which sends Jim’s head up like a dogwhistle, clumsily throwing off the sheets and pulling Spock away. There’s a tension in his face as he pulls his jeans on, silently crosses the room. Over his shoulder Spock can see Rand’s face, and hardly catches the quiet, almost secretive words passed between them.

“Chekov.”

“Chekov?”

“He’s alright. But you need to talk to him.”

“Is he in trouble?”

“Just talk to him. He asked to see you. Specifically, you, and I think I know why.”

Pulling the curtain back, Jim stands for a moment with his back to Spock, rubbing one hand over his mouth, deep in thought. Spock doesn’t have to ask, just pulls the sheets back and looks around for his own clothes. An energy falls over them both like children, being called inside to face their misdemeanors, heads bowed as they dress in silence, Spock trying to claim Jim’s red flannel shirt casually enough for it to seem indeliberate, though he knows the scent of it will ease his anxiety.

The thrum of their shoes against the stairs leading down to the kitchen feel like irregular heartbeats, and Jim is perfectly silent as they make their way into the room where it seems everyone Spock has met is gathered, McCoy throwing Jim a scalding look that Spock thinks makes him feel worse than the recipient.

Chekov isn’t hard to spot, seated in the middle of the nervous people raising their heads to acknowledge he and Jim’s entrance and inhaling what looks to be a bowl of tomato soup with incredible voracity, hunched almost vertically over the table as he shovels the spoon into his mouth a final few times with loud clinks against the ceramic, shoves it to the side, and downs half of what appears to be a glass of water - only given away by the split-second flinch as he slams it back down. Satiated, he turns with a snap and points a skinny finger at Jim, and Spock is immediately reminded of an irritable sort of baby squirrel, round black eyes and a soft, round face with tousled hair, and looking at Jim as ready to pounce.

“You’re in some deep, deep trouble, Keptin.” 

“Lovely to see you again, Pavel.”

This response, though impressively collected coming from a personality like Jim’s, doesn’t seem to impress Chekov much, who narrows his eyes, swipes a handkerchief across his face, and clears his throat again.

“Do you have any idea what I’ve been through at the hands of that bastard man because of your actions? A week! They drug me along with them for a week, before turning me loose, and they didn’t even bring my car, I had to hitchhike from Big Bear all the way home, no money, no clothes. And I don’t even remember half of my containment, because Khan had me drugged or something, interrogated me from dusk to dawn, I don’t even know what he put in me, I’m hearing fucking static out of one ear - and they did not even tell me why, just James Kirk, James Kirk, James Kirk, so long that it stopped sounding like a word.”

It is only about half of his speech that Spock can comprehend, so fast does he talk, and with such a thick Russian accent. He wants to look at Jim, almost to hold his hand, shield him in some way, but he finds himself rooted in place, comically afraid of moving even an inch from his gaze. He doesn’t even hear what Chekov has said to make Jim turn to him, but when he meets his eye something sinks, something terribly bare in Jim’s wordless look, something scared, that scares him.

“Where was Khan when he let you go?”

“A little south of Big Bear.”

“Still with his motorcycle?”

“Yes.”

Jim looks back at him again. It both meant that he never caught on to their change in transit, and that it will take him less time to get to the mill. It goes unspoken that he knows. And though Khan let them get away twice at this point, Spock knows deep inside him that there won’t be a third time, that him sending out this messenger to them is a warning, and the message is to prepare. 

As if Chekov can hear this string of thought between him and Kirk, he stands up from his seat, hardly coming up to Spock’s chin, and reaches into his back pocket for a very bent, and quarter-folded paper, which he hands out to Kirk between two fingers.

“He sent this along. I thought it would be something of importance, but it looks like he just did it to fuck with you.”

“You read it?” Again, Spock finds himself glad to know the fullness of Khan’s vendetta, because the brazen fear in Jim’s voice pulls at his own heart before he quickly unfolds it.

“Nothing to read.”

Chekov is right. Jim turns it over, and then over again, then holds it up the the light. He hands it to Spock, who does the same, though he isn't sure why, then puts his hands on his hips and looks around at the people gathered, waiting for him to speak.

Spock recognizes the page right away, the size and pattern, the font across the top Herman Melville. 564. A chapter’s end, only about half a page in full text, and cleanly torn from Khan’s own copy. And so clear of personal message that the world around him, Jim trying to make sense of it all, his friends around him listening with a vague mix of dread and anger, but still valiant trust in him, goes pale, leaving him with only the piece of paper, and every layer of himself inside quaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops! i'm gay :)


	7. Bow and Arrow

_“Believe ye, men, in the things called omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again, to sink for evermore. So with Moby Dick—two days he’s floated—tomorrow will be the third. Aye, men, he’ll rise once more,—but only to spout his last! D’ye feel brave men, brave?”_

One finger flung out towards him on the bed.

“As fearless fire.” 

_“The things called omens! And yesterday I talked the same to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I seek to drive out of others’ hearts what’s clinched so fast in mine!—The Parsee—the Parsee!—gone, gone? and he was to go before:—but still was to be seen again ere I could perish—How’s that?—There’s a riddle now might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line of judges:—like a hawk’s beak it pecks my brain. I’ll, I’ll solve it, though!”_

Spinning on his heel, Jim looks down at him over the page held out in his hand, like an actor reading a part, full of bravado that Spock knows is borne of his frustrations, that have always turned him sarcastic and a little over-dramatic.

“Did anything come to you that time?” 

“Not a thing.”

Spock has been sitting, cross-legged on the bed and watching Jim attempt to decipher Khan’s message since he woke up, which has now dragged on for a solid hour. Not to say he doesn’t enjoy the performance of it, his overblown recitations of the same page as he paces in front of the bed, especially the fevered monologue of Ahab, which he pays special attention to, but it has become to seem quite fruitless, and he wishes Jim could see the same.

“Anything on your end?”

In his lap, he twists some of the blanket fringe between his fingers, reluctant to disappoint him with the answer.

“None of it’s underlined? No circled letters? Hidden messages?”

“No.” Jim folds it back up, tosses it away without consideration. “I’ve read the damn thing backwards and forwards, and there’s absolutely nothing to interpret from it.”

"A red herring? Maybe he's trying to distract you. I mean, aside from the obvious parallel"

“I’d hate to think he’d be so petty.” Utterly defeated, he falls backwards across the waves of the blankets in front of Spock, cut down yet again. Spock really does hate to see him so bothered, however appropriate of a reaction it is, to their current situation. He would tell him not to worry, if he didn’t know how counteractive it would be.

“You’re doing everything you can.” He settles on instead, and Jim raises both hands over his face and takes a deep breath, and even if it doesn’t help, he at least appears to agree.

“Do you remember…”

“No.”

“Maybe a week before I left... When we rode out to the creek together, and I was still trying to convince you to come, still pushin’ you, still thinking you were going to give in. And I remember telling you...everything we were gonna do, my whole plan again, and you just...just snapped. Starting yelling at me, out of nowhere. You’d never yelled at me, I mean I'd never seen you yell at anyone, it kinda scared me. I still remember what you were yelling at me. Can you for once in your fucking life stop being so romantic. Couldn’t you just stop and get your head out of space for one second to think about you’re asking me to do, to leave everything I’ve made for myself here behind, just for your fucking fantasy. You went on for a while. And I don’t even think I answered you, it just baffled me that much. You’d never acted so romantic.”

“I don’t see how that is relevant.” Spock truly has blocked that night from his immediate memory, the event of it seeming convoluted, unlike him and embarrassing, though he's sure Jim is truthful about his experience.

“Maybe it isn’t. I just feel like...like I’m understanding how you felt. That anxiety, I guess. The sense of everything slipping away. Maybe you’re right. He’s tryin’ to distract me.”

"Do you think I’m slipping away?" He says it and then wants to pull the words back in, chew them up, throw them away like Jim threw Khan's message. He realizes too late he's equating himself to everything, though he didn't mean to. Jim makes no effort to answer him, rolls onto his side and reaches out for his hands, trying to cover them both in his own. His face is blank, resigned, so unlike him. Spock turns his hands around Jim's and holds it flat between them. They're both unlike themselves, unfocused, obsessive. “Why Moby Dick?” he says to Jim one night, not expecting a response, and into the top of the head he answers, “that’s just how he sees himself.” 

“Slightly insane, irrational, elegic?”

“Pretty much. He’s a romantic.”

“And you’re Moby Dick?”

“Conceptually, I suppose so.” His vanity intact. If that’s really all there is left to grasp to. Spock doesn’t know how he let himself be reduced to grasping, but he does, physically and poetically.

Everyone is. The entire mill is bending under the weight of Khan's impending attack, sent into silent, busy preparations. Spock becomes a great source of interest as the only willing individual to talk openly about Khan, though that afternoon in the bar in Black Rock and the following nights he spent tracking them feel light years away, now. He doesn't have information of much substance to offer, only that he seems very serious, and quick-witted. Comfortingly, he finds the conversations turning to the superficial, what do you think turned him to crime? Who was he before? And there is a certain regality about his figure that Spock can attest to, a nobility about the hunt, however it has affected the closest man to his heart. He finds that he respects him, and like he first thought in the bar upon their meeting, would be content with falling to his gun.

Jim doesn't appear to feel the same. They are seated across from each other at one of the greenhouse tables one afternoon, rooting through cans of ammunition and sorting them into calibers, wandered up to check on Sulu - who stole Spock's breath by turning to a cabinet in the greenhouse and flinging it open, exposing rows of beautiful handguns and pistols, all shapes and sizes that Spock cannot begin to identify - and were put to work in his factory line as he examines and cleans them.

"Sulu is a collector of vintage deathtraps. So he's in charge of the armory, of course."

"Mostly swords, but I can't see those coming in handy." He calls across the room, every cheerful. Sulu is refreshingly chipper about the situation, though just as conscious of the weight of it. Spock watches him raise a heavy, lengthy sort of thing and check the sightline of it, something glinting in his eye as he twirls it and mimics sliding it into his holster. A swashbuckling charm about it. He trusts him immensely to lead the defense.

"Billy the Kid used one of these. Colt revolver. Double action, .44 caliber. I never thought I'd put it to use. Any of these, for that matter, some are so antique I'm not sure how reliable they are. He liked the Winchester rifle best, but I don't think we'll want to break that out."

"Khan carries a fancy little pistol sort of like that." Spock points out, hoping Jim will get the hint, but he's still standing bullets upright on the table in front of him, only glancing up to acknowledge him. "I mean that maybe he's all looks. Went for the drama over substance again. It would fit with our understanding of him."

"I sure hope you're right." Sulu lays the revolver flat on the table with the rest he's checked so far, and with his back turned, Jim stops, looks up at Spock, and speaks under his breath.

“What bothers me most is that none of these people are fighters, Spock. Strong, intelligent people, and I know at least a few are good marksmen, Sulu included, but they aren’t fighters. Khan isn’t going to hesitate to come at us with all he’s got, fancy gun or not. Khan won’t mind who gets caught in the crossfire between him and me.”

“No one should be killed.” Sulu pitches in from across the room, checking over a little pistol that looks like it belongs anywhere but a gunfight. “Or seriously hurt, for that matter. No matter their direction, we aim for the hands, and the feet. Incapacitating them is our best hope to get out with our lives and our psyches both intact.”

“That’s respectable.” Spock offers.

“Well they can put that on our headstone. They died respectably."

Spock bites his tongue, dangerously close to telling Jim if he has such little faith, to just ride out tonight and meet Khan before he reaches the mill at all. But he knows Jim well enough to be sure that's exactly what he'd do, if given an out for it.

However gentle they try to seem, however unconcerned, despondency creeps over the mill like a storm, every moment spent with your weapon within arm's reach, in anticipation of the scouts positioned 24/7 now on the battlements rushing inside. Every time he and Jim see each other, in their room, on the battlements they pitch in to build: slats of wood left over from construction nailed together to cover the terraces, sightlines in long gashes every few feet, in the armory, he wants to tear into him and press inside, wants to hide from it all, though he knows it isn’t possible. More than anything, he wants to be riding out again. The opposite direction, straight up.

☆

The day that Christine Chapel rushes into the mill, red-faced, calling for them to be stationed, he's laying with one ear against Jim's chest, the other in his idle hand. His eyes are closed, he feels nothing but the steady roll of his breath and the length of his body against his own. And then he hears Chapel, and the rise all through the mill of people making their way out, and for a moment he and Jim don't do anything, and he tries to tense all the muscle in himself, make himself heavier, to keep them there a moment longer. But them Jim starts to turn and he feels himself slide onto the bed like a pool of water, left to watch Jim put on his shirt, face hard, resolute, then buckle on his gunbelt - on loan from Sulu. Like dressing for a funeral, soundless, his jaw clenched. Spock follows him slowly, his fingers shaking at his belt loops. How did Moby Dick end? It didn't feel much like this does, not at all, and Spock can't figure out who is the captain anymore.

As he trails behind Jim to the main entrance, silent as he passes words to Scotty, to Rand and the rest of them, Chapel who stands with a handgun at her side and her ammo slung over the shoulder of her blue sundress, Uhura beside her, loading her gun, he finds himself thinking again of Pike.

He means it when he says he isn't sure who's who in this reenactment. He’s thinking back to the week before he left - not Jim - and the conversation with Pike. When he told him to go. To go find Jim, and bring him back, if he wanted, but to find him. It had stuck with him, in a strange mélange of fear and relief. That Pike seemed to be aware, all of a sudden, of how reserved Spock had become in Jim’s absence, how serious, and the implications of that, and then relief. Relief to be on the road again, as much as he feels for Pike, as hard as it will be to leave his side. He gives him his last paycheck, points him towards his desk and tells him what to take out. Four hundred dollars, and Spock knew it was more than he earned, much more, but Pike makes him take it. Twists his arm and catches the knob on his nightstand with unsteady fingers, pulls it open, presses the wad of blue fabric into Spock’s open hand. To keep the dust out of his mouth. Back then it still smelled of borax and the palm of his hand, now when Spock knots it at the nape of his neck, and tucks his face into it for a moment of clarity, it only smells of himself.

So his mission was to find Jim, that creature that had stolen that inner shell of himself and taken it along with him to the wide open blue, that lurked in the unknown and waited for the rest of him. Flinging himself down onto Pike, face stinging, burying his nose in his chest, closer than he had ever been in five years of working for him, and on the day of his indefinite departure, at that. Holding him so tight he scared himself. Other half.

With his hand back against his gun, where he finds it feels most at home, he watches the back of Jim’s neck as the circle of them go silent, and beyond the door the rumbling, growing sound of the cycles sends his heart racing. Jim looks back at him, mouth still a thin line, but head cocked as if with an idea. Then his belt comes off, pressed into Spock’s hands, and before he can compose himself enough to ask, he leans around Scotty and the door control and pulls the lever to open it, hands raised away from himself.

Spock’s mind stops registering. He looks quickly to Scotty, who hasn’t said a word, but whose eyebrows are furrowed enough for him to tell he’s just as confused. The door screeches to a halt halfway, and everyone but Jim and Spock dodge out of the stream of natural light. 

Instinct tells him to either follow Jim, or pull him back by the collar, but Spock finds he can do neither, rooted in the open doorway as he watches Jim calmly walk out into the open, directly towards the formation of black and silver cycles that have hummed to a stop at the end of the road. Paralyzed in Jim’s shadow, Spock is left holding his gunbelt and desperately trying to return it, but Jim doesn’t receive any of his messages, stopping, hands on his hips ten feet out as Khan and his men dismount, Khan whipping his helmet off with a flourish that sends his hair gleaming in the fading sunlight. Both he and Jim are golden, shadows long, a beautiful tableau of imminent death. Around him, Spock can hear the cocking of guns, has half a mind to extract his own, but is still compelled to be motionless.

“Come face me, Khan. Without your men.”

From such a distance, Spock can still see the grin on his face from over Jim’s shoulder, a belittling thing, and he begins to understand why Jim is out there, unarmed. That pride, again. 

“You see Kirk, you’re coming to me unarmed. But I have no intention of coming to you in such a way, because I would like very much to shoot you.”

“I have no quarrel with your friends. As you should have with mine. We’ll settle this between us.”

“Noble words from a man guilty of your crime.” It comes as a great relief that Khan has the decency not to expose the crime. “You assume my friends have no quarrel with you.”

“Then let them settle it with us.”

A lull falls over their strange standoff, until Jim’s shadow creeps up to his boots, and Spock almost feels the comfort of his contact, and realizes he needs to pull himself together, shut off whatever part of him is straining and despairing to go to Jim.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. You see, I’ve hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you, for hate’s sake, until my last breath, and so on. I assume you know the rest well enough.”

“Right.”

The dreaded smile again. Khan reaches behind him, momentarily worrying Spock, but extracts his gun flat in his hand, unhurriedly popping open the chamber, reaching around himself for a handful of bullets.

“So how will we do this, old friend?”

“I assume I’ll go back inside, and we’ll both cower behind our forces until it tires us out.”

“For a while, perhaps.”

“Or I’ll just stay standing here until you find the courage to face me evenly.”

The shot is the loudest thing Spock has ever heard, he is sure they hear it even down in Texas, if just a vibration in the ground, a rustle in the trees. There is another shot, almost directly following it, and beside Khan the same blonde man from Winslow drops his raised gun to the grass, and pulls his bloody hand to his chest, looking up at the battlements in surprise.

The stitch in time that holds Spock still pops, and before he can think or even abandon his arms he's darting forward, one arm around Jim's chest and dragging him back inside, behind the cover of the door, where McCoy is already taking him to the side and tearing his sleeve. Jim doesn't seem phased by any of it, not even the doctor taking a pair of tweezers to his shoulder, but as he retrieves his gunbelt from Spock and starts to put it on again, he looks up at him, with a look that expresses only sorrow, and it tears into him like a knife.

"Idiot thing to do. You're lucky Spock had the nerve to drag you back in, or they'd be using you like a tin can on a fence right now."

"It was worth a shot." Spock dares to oppose him, but he only seems to have argument for Jim, who doesn't look to have argument in him for anyone. Jim lays a hand on his bicep, squeezing tightly.

"Go be at your post." McCoy is already winding bandage around his arm and shoulder, quick and austere as a field surgeon, and Jim tosses him a smile as he draws his gun. "At least it wasn't my shooting arm."

Left to dutifully return to the second floor barricade, where he's been casually stationed between Chapel and Uhura, who are already slipping the barrels of their arms through the sightlines and carefully firing down at the ranks below, Spock realizes he's missed the start of the war altogether, the air filled now with short, occasional bangs, a booming voice calling only for disarming shots. Two of them in the trees on the west side. Cut them off before they get where we can't see them. 

As he squeezes the gun between his hands and waits for the figure to step out from behind the tree he's caught his shadow behind, Spock realizes Jim was both right and wrong. He was right in his conjecture that the mill-folk are not fighters, that much is plain by their cold glances and tightened lips when Spock sees another of Khan's men buckle under a shot to the foot, but he was also wrong in assuming it would be a detriment to their chances of survival. Spock finds them to be incredible tacticians, never mind their marksmanship, but all their shots seem to go wide, never any closer to the body than intended. Spock trusts them, inherently. When his man steps out, just long enough to raise his arm, he's already squeezing the trigger, and watches him flinch and recoil without taking his shot. Another thing Pike taught him in those halcyon days. If this were fifty years ago, you'd either be dead or a city slicker, you'd want your gun on hand for protection, especially with a stock like ours on the line. hands flat on his shoulders, turning them just an inch, laying his hand for one second over his knuckles. "Keep your hand still."

"Have you always been the ranch business?"

"No. I grew up in the Mojave. It was my interest in horses that brought me here, I had an uncle hard on health that ran this establishment before me. He died not long after I came, I had to pick up the slack quickly. It's mostly been improv, but I think I've done alright. Keep it still. It's just a bottle, nothing to be afraid of. Squeeze. Don't pull."

With a deep breath Spock hits the loose hand of a man fifty feet deep into the trees.

"You've got the makings for something. I'd call you a natural marksman, but you've got to do somethin’ about those nerves." He’s bending in the grass behind the fence now, the clink of the bottle fragments in his cupped hand, setting a new target up on the post. Spock can still hear the crickets all around them, feel the heavy, hot air.

"Good thing we aren't fifty years ago, then."

His head popping up again, stupid smile across his face, hardly visible in the growing darkness, but showing no sign of wanting to return to the yellow light of the doorway.

For just long enough to call to Sulu that he can see more men circling around between the trees, Spock cuts the reverie short, and takes the opportunity to regroup himself as feet thunder past behind his back. The one with the hand he’s just hit readjusts himself, and he can just see the point of his gun creeping around a tree trunk.

His second shot is worse than the first.

If he were with Pike, he would shrug it off, tell him to try again, and he would do it, too. Or if he told Pike he was through, asked him to come inside, he would pick up the rest of the bottles and do it. But Pike isn’t here, and neither is Jim, and when the target moves, the bullet doesn’t hit with a satisfying flinch, a dropped gun, but an arterial spray from the juncture of the wrist and a distant cry of pain.

The blood spilled across the grass at his feet, Spock watches, gun still raised, as he disappears behind the tree, and bites his lip. In his lap, he snaps open the chamber and starts to refill his gun, but his fingers are shaking, hardly finding the openings, vision field going thin, going red. The moment with Pike behind the house is suddenly too sharp to return to for comfort, but the trees in front of he and the others are clear, and he turns his head to Uhura, who’s looking back at him with what he imagines is a similar expression, then over his shoulder to Chapel. Neither of them comments or gives any indication of acknowledgement to his mishit, and for a moment they share a wordless respite.

Finally, his gun is loaded, and just in time, because suddenly there is a cacophony he never could have imagined, and voices from around him that he can’t make out, but doesn’t need to, can see how Khan’s remaining forces in the trees begin to dart away, can hear the sudden thrum of a motorcycle, and the blaring siren that meant more trouble than they prepared for. For a brave, or perhaps idiotic moment he raises his sight over the barricade and confirms his fear, a highway patrol car, new guns, though incredibly outnumbered, seems to be two, though behind much more substantial cover than any of them. From his angle, he can’t make out most of it, just hear the shots continue to ring out.

Khan’s men seem entirely distracted, half-fled, thankfully caught in a much more compromising position than their opponents, one of which he sees dart out across the trees, gun in both hands. He must see a flash between their boards, doesn’t think, or perhaps doesn’t care to think, because in a flash the barricade just beside him explodes.

It happens just as quickly as with Jim, the splintering wood nearly perfectly between the slats, Uhura quickly crying out and clutching her forearm, Chapel suddenly on her feet, reckless, gun straight up in front of her, and Spock turns his head just in time to see the patrol officer’s face cut through, his body collapsing on the spot.

Jim is at the entrance still, when he follows Uhura down to the atrium. McCoy is patching grazes, he is relieved to find no serious injuries, and when he slips up behind Jim, he turns with a look of alertness in his eye that comforts him greatly.

“Hey, Starbuck.”

“How is your shoulder?” He shrugs, peers back around their cover.

“Nothing like Khan.”

Spock lays his face against the doorframe like Jim has, and Khan is right in the open, surrounded by two of his men, still firing into the patrol officer’s car. A dark spot in the denim of his thigh, a leaking graze across his gaunt cheekbone. Jim could take a shot at him this moment, and end it, but Spock knows that it would be unfair, somehow, with the police involved. The same wild look in his eye as Jim has. 

“They made quick work of those patrol officers, did you see that?” Spock remembers the hole in his face, Chapel’s raised arm.

“They did.”

"I thought we were in real trouble for a second. But no one comes all the way out here. When it all blows over maybe we can go on a little road trip, seal this place up nice like we found it, in case the cops come around wondering why two patrol officers went missing down this way." It surprises, and comes shamefully close to enamoring him - the ease with which he talks about subverting the law so, even with the body count. Amazingly, the pain of his bad shot, of seeing that officer crumple to the ground and of Uhura's arm, all softens with two minutes spent shoulder-to-shoulder with Jim, who pauses a moment to gracefully reload his gun, and leans in even closer, as if telling schoolyard gossip.

“I’ve got this feelin’, Spock. Khan doesn’t intend to make it out of here alive.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t. Just somethin’ about how he’s carrying himself.”

Another deep rumble through the ground, and Jim stops, peering out again.

"There's the rest of his gang, then, I thought he was lookin' a little short." Jim steadies himself and takes a single shot out the doorway, hardly waiting to see its success or not before turning back to Spock, just as chauvinistic as if he was driving cattle instead of holding back a vindictive madman. No wonder he was so adamant about the fighting nature of the mill residents, against them he is really one of those great historical gunslingers Sulu lauded to them just last week. A benevolent, stupid, bright-eyed Jesse James.

"Where's Khan?"

Jim shoves his head underneath Spock's at the doorway, silent for a moment, then groans. Spock can pinpoint where five men are sheltering behind trees, still firing up into the second floor, but none of them are their leader. There is no sign of his motorcycle, either, as if the arrival of the rest gave him cover enough to slip away. If he hadn't been so distracted, Spock is sure he would have noticed.

"He had something with him. Something on his motorcycle. I never got a good look at it. Something in strapped down."

"What do you think it could be?"

"I was hoping you had some idea. Do you want to take a backup, Chekov, maybe-" He gestures at the Russian, who is hanging back and rubbing at a bandage across his own hand, looking up and pushing off from the wall he leans against at the mention of him. "Go around, check all the entrances. See if you can spot him? He can't be up to any good."

Chekov is already moving, checking his gun, lifting a bottle from the wall that Jim eyes him for before shrugging, innocently affirming that its for the pain, and doctor prescribed. 

"Come back once you find him, alright?"

"I will."

He and Jim are separated once again.

☆

In the gunfire and energy raging outside, and the low light of the rest of the mill - it is approaching dusk now, and the lifeless expanse of the compound is almost gothic - he and Chekov survey every entrance and window they come across. They don't speak, but command every opening with their guns half-drawn, a half-hearted sigh every time it reveals a vacancy.

"Could he have fled? He was wounded, you know."

"Jim didn't seem to think so. And neither do I." Though he wishes it were true, Spock can't even entertain the possibility, with what he knows of Khan. He returns again to what Jim assumed about his intention, and finds himself unsure if it's frightening or relieving.

"Could he be hiding? Flattened against the wall or something. Maybe we should check from the outside."

Despite Jim's simple orders, Spock finds this prospect worrisome enough that it is suddenly imperative to do so. Whatever Khan's intentions, he can't risk the time spent on a full journey back before even finding Khan's location. He and Chekov slip through the door he often used to sit outside in the mornings after he and Jim's arrival, and quietly begin to round the platform outside, staying close to the wall with drawn guns.

"Down there." Chekov stops dead in his tracks about halfway down the stretch, slowly crouching onto the terrace floor, and lowering his eye to the metal. Spock follows suit, and immediately catches the light flash of the top of his head. He doesn't seem to be moving, appears to be lighting a cigarette, then twirls the lighter in his hand. In front of him is the motorcycle, which he watches Khan stroll over to, lifting something from the seat of it, weighing it in his hand. One of his hands is dark, smeared in something, and his shirt bears the same color, and Spock realizes he hasn't caught sight of the man from Winslow since the patrol officers arrived, the real Starbuck.

"A bomb?" Chekov hisses at his left ear, and Spock swallows down his reluctance.

"He captured you. Do you think that's a possibility? Did you see any handling of materials?"

"I can't be sure."

"What could he be waiting for, if so? For Jim?" Spock is certain his intent would be to break open the side of the mill, preferably with a crowd to watch, and the calmness with which he glances down the wall, as if waiting for a rendezvous, only adds evidence to his theory.

"Go tell Jim, anyways." He whispers, and puts out his arm as Chekov begins to slip away. "Wait. Do you still have that bottle?"

He is almost sure Chekov will ask why, but it's already bumping against the back of his hand, and then he's gone, silent as a bird in the night. No questions asked. If he had, Spock isn't even sure himself what he would say.

Raising the bottle up to the light, he can see just an inch of the alcohol still inside, and though he admittedly has little knowledge about incendiaries, assumes it will be his best shot. For a moment longer, he watches Khan, then unstops the bottle, carefully unknots the bandana at the nape of his neck, and twists it inside, pushing it deep with his finger. It hurts. Worse than anything he's seen today, it hurts to dig into his back pocket for the little, forgotten book and strike a matchstick out onto the worn blue fabric, sending up a skinny flame that makes Khan's head snap up, his arm raise and a bullet to whiz past Spock's cheek.

Rolling to his side, he dodges the second shot, but it sends the bottle's contents sloshing against the burning fabric and the whole thing begins to erupt. Diving over the railing, he brings it back and launches it with all his strength down onto Khan and the thing in his hand, which he drops and lunges away from in the same instant Spock sets his loose. 

Their combined devices meeting in the middle. 

This happens around the same time that Spock loses the grip of his lower half on the railing. 

Spock never realizes that Chekov has returned, or that he is backed with nearly their entire force. In fact, the image of Khan raising his gun once again, firing up onto the terrace and screaming is all he truly notices, because when his half-decent molotov hits the napalm bomb Khan was holding, it sends up an incredible cloud of flame that seems to attach to both his arms, and by the time he hits the grass, his hands feel constricted by a web of wires that cut through his skin, make his vision blurry as he presses himself into the grass, unable to even tell if he's screaming over Khan. 

Khan is standing not five feet away, still firing, still belting out about hell's heart, five circles of streaming blood in his bare chest, and as he turns his gun down upon him, still crawling out of the fire they created, Spock can see in his pale, feral gaze something he can only describe as knowing. Of relief. A horrible, bloody smile on his face as he looks down at Spock, and lets the gun go limp in his hand.


	8. Pike and the Bronco

June, 1964, only a few months after Spock came to work at the ranch, Pike catches a horse.

It’s only midmorning when a commotion outside brings he and Jim to full attention, and then hurrying out to the corral at his call. The rest of the hands are already coming up to the fence, all just as astonished as the two of them at the spectacle inside. Both hands on the lasso, his arms flexing, leaning so hard to the side half of his torso hovers over air, Pike is dragging a horse into the corral none of them have ever seen, a chestnut, young-looking thing that tugs against his rope relentlessly. Jim is already half over the fence, one hand up to his mouth, yelling something at him he doesn’t acknowledge, is much too busy to, and Spock watches in silence as he steers his horse right up to this one, pulling in the length of rope as he does, and slips the lasso over his tossing head with a tired pat against his nose. He looks up to the fence, and drags a hand back across his forehead, and Spock imagines he looks to him first, even though Jim is still berating him at his side.

“Where in the hell did you get that?” Jim breathes a final time as he brings himself up to the fence, and this time he smiles, raising his bandana to wipe the sweat from his face.

“Found him.”

“Found him?”

“That’s right. I’m inclined to believe he escaped from his last owners. He’s shoed.”

“So, what happens when he does the exact same thing here?”

“Then I’ll learn a lesson.” Pike turns back to his prize, who’s wandering around the corral now with a fussy, but resigned air about him, snorting and bumping his nose against the fenceposts, but doesn’t seem offended enough about his situation to try escaping. 

“What do you intend to do with him?” Spock finally asks, but Pike only shrugs.

“Don’t know yet.”

Jim tosses him a look that he assumes means something, but he doesn’t ever figure it out. That evening, he and Jim set about clearing an unused stall at the end of the row, that had been previously used to store the feed, various farm tools, and green memories safely tucked out of sight behind the half-wall. Jim makes a lot of fuss about it, the uselessness of an animal that will probably break out before the week’s up, but he does the work anyways, standing up from where he’s been nailing a new water trough to the wall to turn to Spock, laying his hammer to the side and pulling him close, gentle, looking up at him with the soft, needing look with which he often roped him into his embrace and planting a row of kisses across his jaw. 

“You reckon Pike went and got that horse for a reason?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you think he’s caught on to this being our favorite kissing spot?”

His mouth is already on Spock’s neck, his words pressed deep into his skin, and Spock can’t even begin to think about it, or the frightening implications.

“There’s no way.”

“Hope not. Don’t know what we’ll do. Maybe we should just run away.”

The bronco doesn’t escape. The bronco stays, though he never tires of his personality, still as firey and rebellious after months of captivity. And he won’t be ridden, takes three men to be saddled, and Pike begins to entertain the thought of selling him to a rodeo. Jim begins to teasingly call him Fireball, for his color and temperament, and it sticks.

One afternoon he and Pike are leaning against the fence together as Jim attempts to mount him for the fourth time that afternoon, just as relentless as he, clawing his way up and slipping his boots into the stirrups with practiced ease, forehead knotting in concentration as the horse begins to twist and buck under him. At his side, Spock can hear Pike begin to whisper a count, one, two, three, four, five, six - and then a frustrated groan from the middle of the corral, followed by the thump of him hitting the ground. Fireball prances around him as he scrambles to his feet, one hand against his back.

“That was worse than last time.” Pike doesn’t waste time in pointing out, and Jim smacks the small of his back again as he walks up to meet them, wincing in pain.

“I think he’s breaking me more than I’m breaking him.”

“Give it a rest, Jim.”

The bronco was never going to be broken, they all knew that. Pike knew it, Jim knew it, and Spock knew it most of all. Yet they continued to house him, continued to try riding him, using him to settle bets, using him for half-drunken whims, they all did, everyone on the ranch, though Pike was always asked first. And Pike held a strange pride in him, despite how many times he was thrown, despite the bruises. Soon, there wasn’t really a question about selling him to the rodeo. Pike never spoke openly about it, but it was clear as time went on he began to care less and less about that business opportunity.

Then, Jim and Spock ride out to the creek, as they often do after they lose their stall to Fireball, and Jim asks him that question that turns their relationship on its head. And then Jim leaves. The next morning, Spock spends so long staring at the ceiling, unable to leave bed that Pike wanders in with a thermometer.

Without Jim, he spends all his time in the field, so long, and often that Tango begins to raise his head when he comes into the stables in the evening. Ironically, he can’t seem to look at Pike much anymore, avoids him whenever he can. Something inside him fearful that Pike has known all along, and would attempt a confrontation, even to simply ask if he knows where Jim went, if he’s coming back for his paycheck. And what Spock might do if he did, if he even spoke the name that becomes a curse around the ranch, uncomfortable, a mystery. He hears many whispered theories. Trouble with the law. A scorned lover. Spock doesn’t have heart or interest enough to tell them he was like a wind-up toy caught on a wall, and something unknown had just nudged him to the side.

Then, Spock is in the field. He takes his lunch break to ride, to just capture a moment of breathlessness that he can only find through riding these days, racing into nothing. Not even driving can give him that, not anymore. He rides, and rides until he forgets it all, even Jim, who he constantly thinks about now that most of the pain has passed. Illogical, entirely speculative daydreams about where he is now, what he is doing, where he is working, They never get him anywhere, only make him wistful, illiterate, mute. Even the smell of an old book will set him on edge, even a wildflower. Jim sitting on the back of a horse, mane between his fingers, his lap strewn with bluebonnets.

He stops at the edge of the forest, not daring to go farther, unroot the memories buried there among the trees, and takes a deep breath. The month of May, the season for their favorite constellations. The Centaur season. On the horizon, way back on the road there is a flash of something, not quite a shooting star, this low, and this early. 

Not a fire, but a light, a siren, a vehicle.

Unlatching his hands from the back of his neck, Spock picks up Tango’s reign and follows that light, not too fast, not knowing at first what it is, until he’s close enough to see, and then he presses her harder, harder, until they reach the stables at a dead run, Spock hardly pulling back soon enough to not send them barreling through the grounds.

Even at their speed, he misses the ambulance, dismounting as it turns onto the road again, and one of the other men, Gary Mitchell, who hasn’t looked him in the face since Jim left, anyways, turns and freezes in his shadow like a deer. The whole ranch seems to have turned out, all standing around with ashen faces and looking at their shoes, and as he stands there, at Tango’s side, some of them drift away, nudging others, blinking and finding somewhere else to be, somewhere that isn’t at the obligation to tell Spock what’s going on. 

He looks to the corral, hauntingly empty. Gate flung wide. Out of the corner of his eye he sees it, and letting the reins slide away from him, walks through the gate, walks up to the edge of that hole in reality, that crater where the illusion hit, until the toe of his boot sits on the very line where it begins. A wet, crimson smear across the ground, 

Out of everything he could do in this moment, all the much more proactive options laid out before him, Spock turns right back around, and leaves the corral, and gets back up on Tango’s back, and rides back out. 

He tells himself it’s to find Fireball, or at least try to. Not for vindication. To bring him home again. The rational voice in his head tells him Fireball is still valuable, whatever his ties to Pike are - or were. And that it is the most logical use of himself at this time is to ride, and look for him. 

Of course, he never sees Fireball again. He rides long into the night, into the woods, back the way Pike said he found him, then turns aimless, thoughtlessly allowing Tango to weave between trees until he feels utterly lost, and has to painstakingly retrace their path until they find the edge once again. By the time he gets back to the ranch, his mind is a void, unmarkable, empty, and he hardly registers bringing Tango to her stall, walking back to the house, up the stairs, the door is still unlocked, as it always was. He doesn’t remember walking down the hall, going into his bedroom, laying down, none of it.

It all turns out better than it could have. Better than he first thought. As hard as it is to recall the immediate aftermath, he knows he learned quite early on that Pike was alive. He knew it because, of all people, Number One drove up to the ranch a day later and told him so, and he was astonished at the fact that she knew before realizing that she was the only one who lived in town, and likely had been to see him. She was very gentle about it, passing the clipboard into his hands for the feed delivery, looking down, explaining herself.

“Word travelled, that’s all. I took a risk going up there, but they made quick work of it all, and since he has no family around here to take precedence, they just let me right in. I don’t think anyone minds who goes in to see him.” That circuitous way of asking. Spock doesn’t go to see him. He should. He knows he should like he knows he should have run away with Jim five months ago and avoided the whole thing entirely. But he doesn’t go to see him. Even the day he comes back to the house, he doesn’t want to see him, because then enough time has passed that he knows Pike wonders why he hasn’t seen him, and he doesn’t know how to answer that.

It hardens him. The whole affair holds him like a paper ball in its hands and crumples him up, packs him tightly into himself, until he is a machine of work and sleep, staying out of the house as much as he can manage to, especially by the time Number One moves in, as unobtrusive as she tries to be about it, right up to the day he comes in after his morning duties to see her brewing coffee at the counter, a new mug in her hand, one that neither he nor Pike hard before she moved in. He has half a mind to turn right around and walk away again, but she opens her mouth just as he begins to, and he stops with one foot out the door.

“Go see him.” The words are hard, each one smashing into his carefully built shell with an individual force. “He’d come to you if he could. You know that.”

He has enough pride to walk away, finally, but the words stick in his skin, and don’t let him free. So he waits until Number One leaves, as she often does in the morning, to work her part shift at the feed store, waits until he can see her truck down the road, and goes back into the house, giving a nod towards the door for the man on the couch - all the hands begin to trade off when Number One isn’t around, each of them hanging around in the living room for a few hours, just so someone is around. He can’t remember who it was, except he leaves very quickly, and without questions. 

There is a force from the hallway like a hurricane, pushing him out, out the door again and miles away from this house, this room, but he makes it through, all the way to the door set ajar. His hand at the door. Not pushing, just moving between the space. The room is brighter than he expects, the curtains thrown wide. It occurs to him that he's never seen Pike's bedroom, not in all this time.

It looks much like his, the same tidy desk, shoes lined up at the foot of the bed. The sheets neatly placed over his thighs. It still strains his resolve, just to look. A book in his hand, his wrists. He goes bit by bit with it all, finds it easier that way, until the book drops in his lap and Spock's forced to look at him, his face turned, one arm reaching straight out towards him, hand open. 

Refusing that invitation would mean the death of a part of himself, he's at the bedside in a moment, hand slipping into his, and the weight of Pike's arm is pulling him down to the edge of the bed. It isn't strong, in just the few weeks he's been out of commission even his hand has become cold and half-limp in his. His knuckles stick out, pale, and his cheeks are even more hollow, but he looks at Spock like something incredible, fumbling at the nightstand for something, a pen, a small pad of paper that he flips to a clean page with some effort.

Spock watches him scribble across the paper on his thigh, other hand still in his, half-forgotten, then turns it, holds it out to him. 

"You can tell Jim I learned my lesson."

He knows he can speak, but something holds his throat and keeps the words from coming, so he reaches for the pen, takes the notepad from his hand, and writes his response below.

"How are you?"

"Awful."

He grabs it back halfway into Spock's hand, drags it back over.

"Better than I could be.

You heard about my voice?”

He only needs to nod. Two hits, one between his shoulders, one that didn't quite land at the middle of his neck. Only partial damage. Number One made sure to educate him. Waist down, there might as well be nothing. The rest of it was tricky, his hands moving clumsily, the effort of handwriting taking complete concentration. The damage to his voice almost hits the hardest, for Spock, as superficial is it feels to even think, the quiet isn’t befitting him. But he is alive.

"How's the ranch?"

"It's alright."

"How are you getting on with Number One? I should have discussed it with you first, it happened so fast. She dropped so much to do this, and she knows I can't even pay her for it."

"Well enough."

"That's good. Are you taking care of my horses?"

"I take them both riding whenever I can. Mary-Lou hasn't warmed up to me all the way, yet."

"I was considering letting Number One have her. That makes it sound like a will."

"No, it's a good idea." Somewhere deep in his sheltered mind, something twists in his resolve, that subtle reminder that there wasn't any eventual recovery, no rebuilding.The rest of his life all but laid out in front of him, just because he caught a horse one day.

They pass the notepad back and forth until they run out of things to say, Pike asking him questions about the ranch, about the horses, is Number One talking about me behind my back - that page they end up tearing out, hidden in Spock's back pocket. Pages and pages of Pike's wide, unruly script and his smooth cursive, back and forth. The next question takes him longer to write, hesitating here and there, lips in a thin line, before passing it back.

"Have you heard from Jim?"

"No."

"Do you know where to reach him?"

"No."

It's the first time they've discussed his leaving openly. And the weight on Spock begins to alleviate, soothe into a dull ache. He never asks for sure why Pike wants to know about Jim, but it’s clear enough that he valued Jim’s work, that he thinks it would do some good to have back such an experienced hand.

It should be, and Spock half-convinces himself it is enough that they can still talk about the ranch. Enough that he is alive, and Spock could go anywhere, do anything, find anything and bring it back to him. He gets a wheelchair, a self-operable one, but is reluctant to use it, says his arms are too unreliable. Spock stays out of his way, for the most part, allows Number One to handle the uncomfortable parts of it, slips out when she comes in demanding he eat something. Makes some excuse to stay out of their battle.

It’s the first time in years he’s thought of his pointed ear, when Number One leaves the room, giving Spock a look that implores him to do something to convince him. He turns back to the bed, Pike looks at the closed door, tight-jawed, eyes narrowed, and back at him. They share a look, in which Spock tries to convey that he has no intention of guilting him, and Pike turns quickly away from, returning to their notes on the bed. 

He has this vision of himself as a child, his whole face hot and teeth tightly clamped shut, flinching inside every time his mother’s hand made contact with him, his own balled into tight fists. The thin line of her mouth as she daubed around the cut, not quite knowing what angle to go at, and realizing she’d need to call a doctor about stitches. The deepest sense of embarrassment, how obvious it was, what had happened, and the incredible inconveniences he caused by that moment’s lapse. He wonders if Pike thinks about it the same - obviously on a much grander scale, but something in his expression as he watches her go reminds him viscerally of that child.

Spock begins to see that child, as if he crawled out his mouth in his sleep, began to wander around in the world. After he leaves the ranch, he sees him in towns, faced pressed in a back window of a car, astonished at the stature of the horse next to him, trailing behind a man entering a bar, in the motel with Jim, back in Olancha, he stands in front of the bathroom mirror with the razor against his cheek, and has to stop, has to put it down, look away. If he stopped showing up with blood all over him, he knows he would handle it a little easier.

So, in front of him is this bird.


	9. Fire

The cold loudly sweeps over the mill in the wake of Khan's men, carrying away much more than they ever bargained to leave. Going outside is harder than ever, this far north, the cold is nothing he's ever experienced. Even going out to the terrace each morning takes careful layering, and he can't stand still for more than five minutes, holding his coat up over his nose. In the turmoil of Khan's impending attack, he had forgotten about the bird from that morning, how he set it up, hoping the predator would return for it. And he continues to forget it, the first few days he goes out again, up until his cold begins to recede, and the wind carries the scent of something thawing in the air, and he looks to his side again.

So this bird isn't a centaur, or a kid with a bloody head, or even Khan's burning, feral gaze looking down on him as he dropped his gun to the grass between then, but the sight of it makes him nauseous, squeezing his eyes shut at the first glimpse before looking back at it fully. No one ever returned for the sparrow, so it naturally sat where it was on the railing, until the freeze happened, which has left it in an icy, thawing cocoon of ratted feathers and protruding, brittle bones, all speckled with frost. 

It’s been dead now for five days, and yet, the re-discovery of it sends him into a ridiculous mourning that compels him to stare at it until his eyes burn with the cold, until he’s stiff, curling into himself, unbearably consumed with hatred for the animal who was so self-absorbed to abandon it here, cut open and flightless. That charred and stoic child inside him cries for the first time in 30 years.

☆

Waking up was a nightmare. He was alone, as usual, and not where he fell asleep, and his head was full of thoughts and memories and empty at once. He has a headache, and it hurts to sit up, all over his torso, down his arms. And there’s a half-baked desire in his mind, to just stand up and walk out the front door, to search for the Centaur, but he reminds himself of the blankets over him, the soft, low light of Jim’s corner of the mill, and it hurts.

It doesn’t emotionally. But when he grips the covers, throws them off, starts to rise from the bed, his hand scratches raw against the sheet and he has to pull it back. Squinting down at his palm in the dim of the room, Spock finds it blistered in half-soft, yellow-red splotches that creep up his fingers, and about the same level of injury on his opposite hand. His wrists are in better condition, but still tough, reddened, with peeling skin. He lays his hands over himself, finds himself cold and sore, but intact. His neck is covered in the same peeling texture, and up the left side of his neck and face it stipples into more painful, blistering spots.

His last memory is violent, something he tucks away before he can dwell on it any further, but it gives context to his injuries, and he's relieved to find their extent to be only skin-deep. His lungs are burning, his throat scratchy and launching him into a coughing fit before he can even stand, which sends him back onto the mattress in a split-second. 

Outside, hurried footsteps approach and fling aside the curtain, and there is a sinking feeling in his chest when it isn't Jim, but the doctor, coming right up to his side and pushing him back down, quickly locating a bottle from somewhere beside the bed and pressing it into his hands. It's thankfully only water, and it helps his throat immensely, and in the few seconds he takes to return his breathing to normal he notices the wall is lines as well with an open first-aid kit, gauze and a bottle of aloe, and other things that paint a satisfying picture of what took place in his unconsciousness.

Jim isn't anywhere to be found, but he watches McCoy lift one of his arms, turning it over and scrutinizing the burns before asking how they feel, Spock replying honestly, that it hurts, and watching him pull out a bottle, pop the lid and carefully knock out a few pills into his sensitive palm, which he gratefully accepts without question.

"I thought I was dead." are the first words he can get out, and his voice sounds worse than he feels, though it doesn't have any effect on the doctor's disinterested look as he refuses the water bottle back, indicating he should keep drinking, which admittedly makes more sense to his throat and lungs than continuing to suck in air that feels interspersed with shrapnel.

“Yeah, we all did. You shoulda seen Jim, running down there, after the thing with Khan was over. Awful to watch."

"I didn't mean to be so dramatic. I feel like I missed everything."

"It was a little rough, I had to bind your fingers apart, I was afraid of keloids - and the rest of the scrapes and cuts, Uhura had a whole bullet lodged in her arm about halfway, and you know Jim had that shoulder injury, but we managed it."

"Where is Jim?"

Even with his stoicism, and Spock's drowsiness that doesn't seem to want to let up, he catches the hesitation before McCoy even has a chance to respond.

“He’s alright?”

“Medically? I believe so.”

"He's gone, then?"

The look on his face tells Spock all he needs to know. He realizes it very quickly, and finds that it doesn't surprise him, though something in him wishes he would be.

"He'll be back. Jim hasn't ever left so abruptly. For a second we thought he was captured somehow, but he took some things with him. That horse, too. I always thought he exaggerated a little about being a cowboy, but I suppose I've been wrong."

No matter the rigidness in his voice, Spock reads him very well, the subtle tenderness of him trying to divert the conversation, knowing it's already begun to work him up. It's only bedside manners, but it comes at an odd relief. So Spock indulges him, as he waits for Spock to apply more aloe to his face and neck, a slow, sensitive process that takes most of his attention. He learns that he's Georgian, ended up in San Francisco to follow his daughter, who had come for medical school, and hadn't seen him since infanthood. He was only a country doctor back home, out of tune with the busyness and systematics of the big city medical scene, and he seems thoroughly convinced that his position now, treating the odd, rustic injuries of the mill-folk is ridiculous and unideal - but the best use of his skill nonetheless. Spock also learns that he is interning Christine Chapel, who takes classes in the city, but still assists him in the upkeep of his business as an impromptu effort in field work experience.

Through it all, he continues to think of Jim. He can't trust McCoy's opinions on his return, but he isn't sure of his options, if he is right in disbelieving him. Either he will wait for Jim, which seems all but unbearable, or he'll do what he is best at, and set out alone. Set into motion again their big wheel in the sky that sends them racing after one another around planet Earth, only converging in brief, blinding moments of relief, before their inevitable pulling apart again by the cosmos, by gravity, and most of all, by their own reluctance to reach out again and rejoin hands.

He hardly decides it. For the next few days there is no choice but to stay, with the uselessness of his hands and lungs, he drinks all he can, eating too, and allows himself to unfurl from his short hibernation. Jim doesn't come back, and yet he feels surrounded by him. Nothing smells like him anymore, but even the pillow bears memories of his head. On his side in Jim's bed, in the dragging, silent hours of night, he can see his clothes. His books, and his other coat. The discarded page from Moby Dick still right where he discarded it, in a bent, lonesome heap on the floor. At this point, it feels like an artifact, memorabilia of the incredible standoff two weeks ago.

The mill people bring him up to speed on the aftermath he missed in his unconsciousness. The great fire - napalm bomb, meant to blow open the side of the mill, his great harpoon - had sent Khan's men, from the moment he had fallen, scrambling around like wolves. Diving in for his body, held between them like a martyr, they slunk off into the night, their cycles wailing as they sped away from the carnage they left. In the coming days, he thinks about it his unconsciousness incessantly. Too shy to ask anyone about it, he daydreams about the near death with his palms flat against his neck, reaching back to that moment the pain took over, Khan's gun thumping to the grass next to his boiling fingers, the ceasefire. How long did he lie against the singed grass before he was retrieved by the pack? Was it Jim? Racing down from the terrace with his gun still lose in one hand, dragging him away from the edge of the flames, maybe pressing his fingers to his neck, ear against his chest. Checking him for wounds, carrying him back inside. Or did he leave that to McCoy, and the others, did he creep away as early as then, too shaken to face the carnage they were left with, to face Spock, the mutilated streaks of his blistered skin that needed attention, the tender state of his mind that he woke to. Was he scared to face that, and did Spock have the grounding to fault him for it?

As for the cops, Jim's plan had worked. Together they swept the field clean, from the bloodstains to the charred ground, and they skinned the patrol car and took it inside. Even the glass from their windows was collected, the cars driven away for the night, Tango carefully led into and housed in the main atrium for the duration of the freeze anyways. And the bodies were buried. It's very clear to Spock how deeply they are thankful for the body count, only two, one courtesy of Khan's men, one from Christine Chapel, who doesn't give comment on it, and no one expects her to.

Only once is he asked his name. Gathered around the fire, at the height of the freeze, crowded on all sides by these people who accepted him into their odd family without question, Uhura asks his name, though it is apparent the rest are just as interested.

"I don't suppose I ever needed one." He answers without thinking it through too much. His voice has improved greatly over the last few days, and his hands are tougher than they were. "You can probably guess how Jim came up with the nickname." and they smile. But he means it just as well. He isn't Spock to anyone else, and he doesn't need it any other way.

When the forest begins to thaw, and he leads Tango back to his stable, Spock remembers his mission. Pike's request. To find Jim, and now he's lost him, but it doesn't feel like a failure. He has found Jim. Done more than find him. With Tango in his hand again, he could ride home right now, and be a success, and he would have Pike again, which is a much more attractive prospect than to sit here and not do much of anything - as welcoming as the mill is to him. 

Even weak and chilled from the air, he comes to Tango’s side, running his hands over her warm flank, and tries to spring up onto her back. He makes it, but then his arms are straining against his sleeves, his hands erupting in pain, and he slides back down to his own feet. Even his neck is throbbing from the exertion, so he stands still, again, where he landed, and stares at the place where he should be.

He realized that much back when Pike asked him to leave to begin with. As he watched him, hands shaking at his neck, tying up the corners of his blue bandana, face still. He understood then that he’d never really have him any more than he did then, with his bandana at his neck. Yet they shared it, this material and get completely figurative object, something that couldn’t run away or be lost, because there wasn’t any belonging to begin with. He would forget it back and forth many times, but now he thinks he grasps it well enough. He doesn’t want to break apart anymore, and he can feel the hardening scars at his throat, just as well as if he had lit that last physical tie between them against his own neck before throwing himself to Khan.

☆

So he waits.

He waits. He starts to garden. Jim doesn’t come. He sleeps alone. And the road begins to send out long ribbons to his ankles, that pull him harder and harder, send him rolling out of bed at night, make him anxious and unfocused, and unlike himself. And Jim doesn’t come. Spock begins to think he won’t. Faults himself for ever thinking he would. For being so willfully blinded by the charm of a man who at his core was a drifter, and nothing more, just a chest of thistle, a soft and stinging thing to hold on to. An actor, and a thief. He was never any better than Khan, not really. Just more fortunate, and less in love. But just as wild. 

The outdoor gardens are left a messy graveyard after the freeze, the brave herb rows in the level ground dry and littered with frost. In the wake of it all, he follows Chapel out to the plot of dirt down a path between the trees, up to the edge of the rectangle plot of hers with his coat pulled up to his chin. It isn’t deathly cold, far from it, but he yanks the fabric of anything up over his neck these days. Then he stands and surveys the ground, the bedsheets draped in rows like bulbous, too-large ghosts, held down by bricks, solar panels and the snaking, green cords underneath each cover. Christmas lights, dull primary colors against the dark soil. “They provide heat around the roots.” she calls back to him as she kneels to begin removing the bricks, tossing the coverings aside to begin prodding the dirt and the browning leaves of something Spock doesn’t know the name of. "Can you get me the watering can? There's a hose over there."

Spock watches her bending over with that little tin watering can in her right hand, and he goes back to gunfire, splintering wood and the bullet between that man’s eyes. The quickness of death. The dull burn still under the skin on his hands as he lowers himself to the Earth has him nervous again, like it might still spring out. Like even with the suffocating thickness of his flesh, there is enough inside to feed from, enough to keep it going for a little while longer. Here, the darkened skin of a branch could alert you to a sickened plant, a browning leaf, a delay in budding. Death is slow, and you can catch it.

Chapel runs one of her nails over the darkened branch on one of the bushes, scraping away bark to reveal a soft green dermis. What might happen when it goes out? She douses the bottom of the plant in warm water, presses the cold soil around it. We need to thaw this ground. Water around the roots can freeze, and dehydrate the plant. He absorbs it in a haze, like most things lately. Was it the fire that did it, or something else? There is no use wondering.

Spock rips out weeds with his calloused hands bare, vaults on to Tango’s back at night and sets them off at a dead run down the highway until his ears ache, until his legs go numb. His skin grows hard. Sometimes he runs his fingers across the edges of his tough membrane and thinks of ripping it, thinks of going soft again, thinks of Jim. But then he’s riding out again.

He is always riding, hardly sleeping, blind and chasing the Centaur through the wrong sky. Sagittarius traverses across the sun, he drives into it with arrow raised. Trying to catch death? His chest hurts. His whole body could be wrapped in callous and he would still hurt. 

His pain extends out from his palms into the mane he grips, he can feel it under him, and then he has to stop riding. For weeks he presses Tango to take them further, and faster, and as he neglects himself, he forgets he neglects her in the same breath. So he stops riding. He becomes human again, short and slow, walking on the edge of the woods in Jim’s old white sweater, a burning ghost in the dark. He rounds the mill again and again, like a predator, long into the night. 

This night, he rounds it for the millionth time he rounds it, until he hears the snap of twigs behind him. 

It’s a dark night. No moon again, the brightest stars, but he has stopped looking at them long ago. He’s no better than a sleepwalker, so short is his vision, so like a blood sniffer, whirling around at first indication of another body in the trees, taking off after it in a second. 

He can feel it moving away, the weight of a horse, dodging between each sparse behemoth between them, backtracking, then curving around to the edge of the forest once again, where he cuts it off. 

Slinking up at its side, pouncing onto it, one hand wrapping around the back of the saddle and cleaving it in half with his other arm. 

Securing both hands around his waist, Spock tears them both off of the horse’s back, and they tumble down onto the cold forest floor, where he holds the body down under his until it goes still but for the heaving chest, slams his head into it and waits, for the hands on his shoulders, firm and pushing at him, moving him away, but not so far, not as far as he’s been used to. He waits, and the hands come, but they don’t push, oddly still, so for whole minutes Spock lays there on top of him, with his hands against the cold ground either side of his neck, before he speaks.

“You scared the hell out of me.” And it is Jim, really, but the violence in him is gone by the time he turns to catch his eye again, something he dropped in their chase, and Spock goes still, trembling with energy, but unable to do anything but look down at his flushed face and smiling mouth and close his hands into fists.

“Did you come back for me?”

“I went back to Leupp” He cocks his head towards the horse, his voice low, just a whisper. “Paid off the rest of my debt. I should have waited, but I didn’t know it was going to freeze, I had to wait it out. I didn’t mean to leave you. This time I didn’t. It shouldn’t have taken as long as it did.”

“I should kill you.” He’s gripping the collar of Jim’s coat, pulling it into his fists, but Jim doesn’t react to it.

“Spock.” His hands at Spock’s shoulders again, still making no effort to remove him, just lying there in his grip, his hands tightening, releasing, bringing him stunningly back to earth without even asking. Hair askew, one curl over his forehead, red cheeks, flushed with the cold. “I’m not leaving. It’s all over. It’s over. We can go back to Texas now, hell, we can go anywhere we want. Go places no one’s ever been, I’ve got the money, I waited some tables.” One of his hands rustling in his coat pocket, then holding a banded roll of cash up to Spock’s lips. “Anywhere you want.” He’s talking fast, but looks straight into his eyes, purely unafraid of anything but Spock’s threat, and maybe not much of that, either.

“You want to leave the mill?”

“Who cares? We can come back. Let’s go to Texas. Maybe Galveston? I’m tired of being cold, I want to go to the beach, get all sunburned, peel eachother like oranges. What do you want to do?”

“We can go to the beach.” He says, and then he laughs, and then the soft and stinging thing he is ceases to matter, because he’s falling again, and not moving at the same time, flying down to Earth, to collide with him in a violent, yet still wonderful crash, he’s shivering, burning, awake, and so alive. And he wants to go with him, despite his anger, he wants to go with him. And for the first time, he finds himself unashamed of that wanting, completely, and visibly unashamed of it. He feels whole, and the sun rises on two horses, two men, and most importantly, the unknown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really don't imagine anyone has got this far but if you did like..wow. thank you. i hope you enjoyed this in some capacity..idk...lol..............i may not show it 100% but i worked on this for two months straight and nothing else and put so much work and tears into it for like no reason at all aside from the raw animal magnetism of spock: cowboy :\ anyways idk what im supposed to be sayin here


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